Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

KILLINGHOLME GENERATING STATIONS (ANCILLARY POWERS) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time on Thursday 2 May.

Mr. Speaker: As the next eight Bills have blocking motions, I shall put them together.

CATTEWATER RECLAMATION BILL (By Order)

LONDON DOCKLANDS RAILWAY (LEWISHAM, ETC.) BILL (By Order)

EAST COAST MAIN LINE (SAFETY) BILL (By Order)

LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT (PENALTY FARES) BILL (By Order)

LONDON UNDERGROUND (KING'S CROSS) BILL (By Order)

REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 3) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

LONDON UNDERGROUND (SAFETY MEASURES) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Thursday 2 May.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

Miscarriages of Justice

Mr. John Garrett: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any plans to update the Home Office response to the 1982 report of the Home Affairs Select Committee on miscarriages of justice in the light of recent events.

Mr.Grocott: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on his plans to deal with miscarriages of justice.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker): On 14 March, my right hon. and learned Frind the Lord Chancellor and I announced the appointment of a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, with very wide terms of reference. It would not be right at this stage to try to anticipate the outcome of the royal commission, but the Government will be submitting evidence to the commission and will introduce such measures as are considered necessary in the light of its report in due course. In the interim, I remain prepared to consider very carefully any representations alleging that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

Mr. Garrett: Does the Home Secretary agree that if the Home Office had listened to the unanimous report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs 10 years ago, in which it stated that the Court of Appeal was incapable of dealing with miscarriages of justice and that there should be an independent review body, most of the disasters of the past few years would not have happened?

Mr. Baker: The Government accepted several of the recommendations of the 1982 report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, especially those relating to the Crown prosecution service. As for miscarriages of justice, an undertaking was given that the Home Secretary would in future be prepared to exercise his powers of reference more readily. That has happened. The hon. Gentleman will know that the royal commission's brief goes much wider than the findings of the Select Committee in 1982.

Mr. Grocott: I very much welcome the Home Secretary's assurance that he will listen carefully to any further evidence on cases. Does he agree that following the Birmingham and Guildford cases, all instances where the prosecution depended on uncorroborated confessions must give rise to great anxiety? Although we welcome the royal commission, will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that he will not use it as a reason for delaying consideration of other serious allegations of miscarriages of justice? Will he confirm that where there is new evidence, especially in cases of uncorroborated confessions, he will take them seriously and deal with them speedily?

Mr. Baker: I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. While the royal commission is sitting, deliberating and formulating its proposals, I shall consider any cases put to me that concern miscarriages of justice


and give them the scrupulous attention which I and all my predecessors have exercised. That applies to the cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred and to all other cases that may be referred to me.

Mr. Lawrence: Does my right hon. Friend agree that while it is an undoubted miscarriage of justice for the innocent to be convicted, it is as much a miscarriage of justice for the guilty to be acquitted? Will he ensure that the Runciman inquiry considers that as well as the other matters to which he referred?

Mr. Baker: The introductory words of the terms of reference of the Runciman committee refer specifically to that. The purpose of justice is to ensure that guilty people are found guilty and that the innocent are not. I fully support what my hon. and learned Friend said. The Runciman committee will consider specific matters of concern, including the way in which the right of silence is treated by the courts.

Mr. Corbett: Will the Home Secretary make it a little clearer than he has that when he receives new evidence which casts doubt on the safety of convictions, such as those of the people who were held responsible for the terrible Bridgwater crime and those of the Tottenham Three, he will seriously consider the evidence and argument without waiting for the outcome of the Runciman inquiry? Will he give the House an assurance that he will pay special attention to cases of that sort where serious allegations have been made against police officers or where investigations are under way?

Mr. Baker: I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. He will know that since I have been Home Secretary I have referred to the Court of Appeal one convicted prisoner in the Broadwater case to see whether the sentence was still safe in the light of evidence which was sent to me and which I examined carefully. If additional evidence is provided in relation to any prisoner in Britain I shall certainly examine it carefully and if I am convinced that there should be a further hearing I will refer it to the Court of Appeal.

Estate Security Schemes

Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many individual estate security schemes have received Home Office grants in the last two years.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Peter Lloyd): Home Office grants have been given for 135 separate crime prevention schemes to increase security on housing estates during the past two years. All those grants were made under the safer cities programme for the 16 towns and cities in which crime prevention projects have been established.

Mr. Bellingham: Is the Minister aware that the North Lynn industrial estate security scheme in my constituency, which was one of the first in the country, has had the effect of almost completely eradicating break-ins and crime? Is he also aware that the local borough council of Kings Lynn in west Norfolk, is setting up a town centre security scheme to cover car parks and housing estates which local

industrial estates will also be able to join? Will my hon. Friend congratulate that excellent Conservative-controlled council?

Mr. Lloyd: North Lynn is an impressive example of what can be done. It is not part of the Home Office safer cities programme. As my hon. Friend implied, it is entirely the idea of the local authority, local business men and the local police. It is a good idea which has been well carried through and I hope that it will be copied by other local authorities.

Mr. Vaz: Does the Minister agree that the amount of grant should be based on the level of crime in a particular area? He will know that Leicestershire has the highest crime rate in the country. Therefore, does he consider it necessary to increase the amount of money payable under the schemes—[Interruption.] Perhaps the Home Secretary will allow me to ask my question without talking across me.
Would not it also be appropriate to increase the number of police officers in areas such as Leicestershire to administer the new schemes that have been implemented? Will the hon. Gentleman look again at the figures requested by Leicestershire county council and award the county more officers, because that is the best and most effective way of tackling crime?

Mr. Lloyd: As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, the safer cities scheme is directed to areas, particularly inner city areas, where rates of crime are particularly high. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, my right hon. Friend takes his decision on the number of police officers required for Leicestershire on the need as assessed and the priorities stated by the inspector of police. The figures for this year have already been decided, but I am sure that if next year there are good reasons for increasing the number of police, my right hon. Friend will be anxious to do so.

Mr. Anthony Coombs: Will my hon. Friend confirm the importance of the secure by design schemes entered into by a number of police forces with house builders as a means of preventing crime? Is not it important that secure by design is dovetailed into the initiatives of the National House-Building Council so that most house builders can offer such improvements to potential purchasers?

Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we can build out to some extent—sometimes even to a greater extent—the possibilities of crime in the way that an estate is designed, it will be valuable. That is something which the Department of the Environment bears very much in mind in its estate action improvements. It includes exactly the sort of thing that my hon. Friend is thinking of—lighting, secure doors and improvements in the design of footpaths and in layout—so that crime is discouraged and much more difficult to perpetrate.

Sunday Trading

Mr. Cartwright: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what recent representations he has received about reform of the law on Sunday trading.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on his consultations with retailers on the reform of Sunday trading laws.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mrs. Angela Rumbold): Since my reply on 15 November to a similar question from my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Field), up to 23 April we had received about 570 written representations broadly in favour of Sunday trading and about 362 against.
I have now begun my extensive programme of separate discussions with bodies representing retailers and other interests to assist the possible development of acceptable proposals for reform.

Mr. Cartwright: May I wish the right hon. Lady well in her difficult task of trying to find a workable compromise or solution to the problem? Does she accept that a key element in that compromise must be effective statutory protection for the rights of shop workers? Any system of Sunday trading that left shop workers vulnerable to pressure and to exploitation would not be likely to carry a majority in the House or, indeed, outside.

Mrs. Rumbold: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his good wishes for my endeavours. I assure him that I am discussing any possible solution and compromise that we could reach with the relevant organisations, with my colleagues in the Department and with my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Employment so that the issue that the hon. Gentleman raised can be safeguarded. As he knows, there would be no sense in bringing to the House a proposal that would not be enforceable and would not command a majority in the House.

Mr. Andrew MacKay: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a matter of deep regret that many people still believe in the nanny state and, therefore, do not allow the people of this country to have the freedom to choose whether to shop? Is not it time to change the law and bring it up to date?

Mrs. Rumbold: My hon. Friend will know that, following the Auld report and the introduction of the Shops Bill in 1986 which would have met his criticisms, the House decided to reject total deregulation. It is because of that rejection that I am now trying to find a practicable solution—a compromise—to resolve the anomalies in Sunday trading, a compromise that will command the support of all hon. Members and be enforceable outside.

Mr. Duffy: The Minister and certainly the Home Secretary know that it is precisely the ideological approach to deregulation expressed by the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) that has put the Government in some of their recent trouble. The Keep Sunday Special campaign has produced some detailed ideas for reform in its REST proposals. Is she aware that a Harris poll shows that 88 per cent. of consumers believe that most of their shopping needs could be met by those proposals?

Mrs. Rumbold: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting me know about the Keep Sunday Special campaign's proposals and I shall, of course, study them carefully. I have not yet had an opportunity to discuss the matter with that organisation, but I look forward to meeting its representatives shortly.

Mr. Stanbrook: Do I gather from what my right hon. Friend said about the 1986 Bill that the Government are still committed to a policy of total abolition of all Sunday

trading restrictions, or have they come to their senses and realised that a compromise is likely not only to achieve success, but to correspond to what most people want—a special status for Sunday?

Mrs. Rumbold: My hon. Friend knows that I am in discussion with many different people at the moment. Since the Shops Bill failed in 1986, we have sought to find a compromise between total deregulation and the current position in which there are many anomalies, which is most unsatisfactory and which leaves people uncertain. At this stage, I cannot give my hon. Friend any greater assurances.

Mr. Randall: Is the Minister aware that, notwithstanding the statements that she has made so far, there is still deep concern about the mess that the Government are in over the Shops Act 1950? [Interruption.] The Government are in a mess. Is she further aware that the Labour party is prepared to co-operate with the Government in a responsible, constructive and positive fashion to push sensible, amending legislation through the House at the earliest opportunity? I wish to ask the Minister one simple question—what target date does she have in mind for pushing a new Shops Bill through the House, or will she continue to dither?

Mrs. Rumbold: I am riveted to hear that the Labour party, which introduced the Shops Act 1950, is offering co-operation with the Government. It has not been forthcoming in offering co-operation at any other stage. Frankly, I am not certain that I should want to take that poisoned chalice. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want the Government to step into the arena of introducing legislation until we were certain that there were agreed grounds for legislation that would meet the requirements of the largest number of people.

Mr. Randall: Dithering.

Mrs. Rumbold: I am not prepared to go further than that. It is outrageous for the hon. Gentleman to say that we are dithering. If he does not wish the Government to consult, that is an amazing position. I should be very interested to read specific proposals from the Labour party which would reassure the many people who have different ideas.

Mr. Latham: As a fully-paid up member of the nanny state, may I commend to my right hon. Friend the thought that if 500 representations are one way and 300 are the other, the best thing to do is to push the ball down the pitch?

Mrs. Rumbold: My hon. Friend has been very helpful. I do not intend to push the ball down the pitch, but to continue my consultations and discussions with interested parties to try to reach a compromise.

Detective John Brand

Mr. Meale: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will call for a report from the chief constable of the West Midlands as to whether detective John Brand is still on duty.

Mr. Peter Lloyd: No, Sir. It would not be right for my right hon. Friend to do so.

Mr. Meale: Will the Minister confirm that, so far, none of the officers accused of perjury has been suspended? Is not that silly, especially in the light of the seriousness of what occurred in relation to the Birmingham Six? Is not it about time that the Government ensured that such an action is carried out immediately?

Mr. Lloyd: The chief constable of the West Midlands has asked the Devon and Cornwall police force to investigate what evidence there is against the officers connected with the case. When that evidence is available, it will be a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions, not for my right hon. Friend. Meanwhile, it is entirely a matter for the chief constable of the West Midlands whether those officers are on duty or not.

Slopping Out

Mr. Barry Field: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the reduction in slopping out in the three prisons in the Isle of Wight.

Mrs. Rumbold: Work is already in hand to provide access to night sanitation at Camp Hill and Parkhurst and work will start at Albany early next year. Slopping out is due to end at Camp Hill and Albany in 1993 and at Parkhurst by September 1994.

Mr. Field: I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent answer. Will not the ending of those degrading practices facilitate the excellent work of prison officers at the three prisons on the Isle of Wight in humanising some of the most evil men in our society? Can my right hon. Friend tell the House how that work has been recognised by a number of improvements in our island gaols? Will she ensure that those who continually criticise the prison service are manacled to the facts for a change, rather than to their own rhetoric?

Mrs. Rumbold: I thank my hon. Friend for those comments. I recognise that, with three prisons on the Isle of Wight, he is in constant contact with the prison service. I also support what he says about the extremely difficult job that prison officers have to carry out, working with people who may not be the most willing group in the world. The officers do a good and sound job and I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that since "fresh start" they have been well recompensed for that work.

Terrorist Offences

Mr. Trimble: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will bring forward proposals for reform of the constitution and procedures of the courts for the trial of terrorist offences.

Mr. Peter Lloyd: We have no plans at present to do so.

Mr. Trimble: Will the Minister consider having plans to do so? Will he look at the examples that could be drawn from the other legal jurisdictions in the United Kingdom where there are procedures that would be of assistance in dealing with these matters? I refer especially to Scotland, where the inquisitorial system in pre-trial procedures would help to avoid some of the problems that have recently been encountered in England. I also refer the Minister to the procedures in Northern Ireland, where juries have been dispensed with in terrorist cases because

of their inappropriateness. That has advantages in dealing with miscarriages of justice because the inscrutability of the jury verdict is not an obstacle.

Mr. Lloyd: Juries have been dispensed with for the present in terrorist cases in Northern Ireland because they are frequently intimidated there. That does not apply on this side of the water. As for the hon. Gentleman's general question, no doubt a number of possible changes might be considered, but that could most sensibly be done by the royal commission that has been set up to look specifically at the working of the criminal justice system.

Young Criminals

Mr. John Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to reduce the level of juvenile and youth crime.

Mr. Kenneth Baker: The Government have several programmes to divert young people from crime. Some safer cities schemes focus on alcohol abuse and anti-social behaviour. Some youth crime prevention panels aim specifically at reducing vandalism and graffiti. We are also working with the Department of Education and Science on its measures to deal with truancy. Several police forces organise activities for young people in the summer holidays. However, some parents could do more to influence their children's behaviour and the emphasis on parental responsibility in the Criminal Justice Bill will encourage them to do so.

Mr. Greenway: With those under 21 responsible for half Britain's crime and with young people so often being the victims of crime, must we not involve our youngsters more in crime prevention measures, so that they understand their responsibilities in society and are encouraged to believe that they can play an active role in combating crime, making for a safer society? Against that background, will my right hon. Friend warmly welcome the youth crime prevention scheme launched last week by Crime Concern and give youth crime prevention his full support?

Mr. Baker: I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The rise in crime committed by young people is very disturbing. It is a long-term trend. One has to do everything that one can to combat it. As he rightly says, one of the best ways is to engage young people to help to solve the problem rather than being part of it. The scheme that he mentioned—youth crime prevention panels—and the work of Crime Concern are important. During Crime Prevention Week last week, there were literally thousands of schemes involving young people in fighting crime.

Mr. Hood: Last week's statement by the Secretary of State that a third of all crime is committed by under 17-year-olds will have shocked many who are trying to come to terms with such a statistic. Will the Secretary of State support tomorrow my Bill on under-age drinking, which will make it an offence to drink alcohol under the age of 18 and will give law enforcement officers powers to enforce some discipline in our play parks and housing estates, to stop the dreaded anti-social behaviour of young kids who become involved in alcohol abuse?

Mr. Baker: Alcohol abuse is a serious aspect of criminality for young people and for people of all ages. I


shall certainly look at the terms of his Bill, although I cannot say whether I shall support it. Anything that can be done to get the dangers of alcohol abuse over to young people is to be welcomed and some crime prevention panels do that. In some city centres efforts are being made to ensure that there is no open drinking of lager—it has now been banned in the city of Coventry—as very many young people were doing so. One must use efforts of that sort to try to reduce the attraction of alcohol to youngsters.

Mr. Favell: My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) mentioned that 50 per cent. of all crime is now carried out by juveniles. Is not it apparent that the soft approach that has been advocated by the so-called experts for years has patently failed, that the day that we abolished approved schools and borstals was a sad one for this country arid that we should look back to it?

Mr. Baker: Let me make it clear that some juveniles certainly have to be held in custody because of the nature of their crimes, their inherent violence and the threat that they pose to society. In the past four or five years the number of juveniles—14 to 16-year-olds—held in custody each year has declined from about 6,000 to 2,000 because we believe that it is easier to help them grow out of crime if they are kept out of custody. I assure my hon. Friend that the different alternative sentences now available must be administered in a tough and realistic way. They must not be seen as a soft option. Those young people who have to be locked up should certainly continue to be locked up.

Mr. Hattersley: Will the Home Secretary confirm that a large proportion of the crimes committed by juveniles is associated with motor cars? In the light of that, why will not the Government limit the sale of duplicate and skeleton keys to those who can demonstrate a legitimate use for them?

Mr. Baker: First, I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said. It is true that a large amount of juvenile crime, especially among young males, is associated with motor cars. Indeed, the motor car is involved in some 24 per cent. of all crimes. The evidence that we have from a wide survey is that there is little use of skeleton keys in breaking into, and stealing, cars. The youngsters who get up to these practices have simpler tools and have become experienced in breaking into cars. That is one of the reasons why yesterday I met the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Next week, I am seeing the car manufacturers to encourage them to design cars in a way that makes them safer and more secure.

Prison Building

Mr. Wilshire: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the progress of his review of the prison building programme.

Mrs. Rumbold: My right hon. Friend and I are reviewing the prison service estate. We hope to be in a position to announce our conclusions later this year.

Mr. Wilshire: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is she aware that the continuing uncertainty about what will be done with the sites is causing considerable concern among those who live close to the sites? Therefore, will she undertake to clear up the uncertainty at the earliest

possible moment, rather than later this year? In the case of the site at Ashford in Middlesex, while local people are grateful for the short-term help that has been given, will she take the opportunity this afternoon to put them out of their misery and announce that she no longer requires that site?

Mrs. Rumbold: As my hon. Friend will know, we are undertaking the prison estate review as quickly as possible. As he will be aware, there are some 150 prisons. When we prepare the White Paper, we shall certainly seek to incorporate in the review the best way to meet some of the requirements in the Woolf report.
I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that we are about to agree a lease on the land at the Ashford site for the local authority for the next three years. At this stage, I cannot commit us any further than that because we could not then conduct a proper review of the whole estate.

Mr. John P. Smith: Does the Minister have any plans to build a training prison in Wales to help to alleviate the suffering of families of prisoners who are serving long sentences?

Mrs. Rumbold: That is one of the issues. We are considering, not necessarily a training prison in Wales, but whether people are sufficiently close to their families when they are put in prison. That is particularly necessary for young offenders. We are aware of the importance of access to families and relatives while young people are serving sentences. The matter will be part of the review.

Mandatory Life Sentences

Mr. Lawrence: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is Her Majesty's Government's policy in respect of the retention of the mandatory life sentence for murder.

Mr. Kenneth Baker: The arguments for maintaining the mandatory life sentence for murder still seem to us to he very strong. Other matters were raised in the debates in the House of Lords and we will, of course, consider them.

Mr. Lawrence: Is not this a matter of maintaining public confidence in the criminal justice system? Surely the public are more confident in a system that uses a unique sentence to mark out the most heinous of all crimes—the deliberate taking of the life of another individual. The public are overwhelmingly in favour of capital punishment. They were given assurances, when capital punishment was abolished, that it would be replaced by a life sentence marking out the uniqueness of the crime. If that were taken away now, public confidence would be substantially undermined and the public would feel betrayed.

Mr. Baker: My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the issues raised in the capital punishment debates before Christmas. Many hon. Members clearly expressed the view that if there were to be no capital sentence, society should show its utter condemnation of the appalling and dreadful crime of murder by a mandatory life sentence.

Mr. Bernie Grant: I refer the Home Secretary to the case of the Tottenham Three—three young men currently serving a life sentence for the murder of P.C. Keith Blakelock. Could I ask the Home Secretary about the case


of Mark Braithwaite, which went before the European Court last week and in which the British Government successfully argued that he had not exhausted the internal machinery of appeals? If that is the case, will the Home Secretary now give us an undertaking that he will refer to the Court of Appeal the cases of Mark Braithwaite and Winston Silcott so that they can go through the internal appeals mechanism?

Mr. Baker: I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a great personal interest in this case and I believe that he is coming to see me quite soon about it. He will know that I referred one of the sentences, that of Mr. Raghip, for consideration by the Court of Appeal when I received further evidence. If I receive fresh evidence in relation to the other two who have been convicted, I will, of course, consider whether their cases should be so referred.

Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that Mr. Silcott has been found guilty not of one murder but of two murders and was indeed tried for a third murder?

Mr. Baker: I believe that was so, but that is not strictly relevant in relation to the Broadwater Farm case. If evidence is brought before me as Home Secretary in relation to this particular case, I will look at it.

Superintendent Richard Bryant

Mr. Madden: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will call for a report from the chief constable of the West Midlands as to whether Superintendent Richard Bryant is still on duty.

Mr. Peter Lloyd: As I said earlier, it would not be right for my right hon. Friend to do so.

Mr. Madden: Is not public confidence in the police and in British justice undermined if police officers who may have committed serious offences remain on duty, in this case duty within the police complaints procedures? Will the Minister make representations to the chief constable of the West Midlands that he should suspend all officers who may have committed offences, until conclusions have been reached as to whether charges are to be brought?

Mr. Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman is in danger of adding to a major injustice, about which he is quite rightly most concerned, a series of minor injustices to police officers by pillorying them in public before the Director of Public Prosecutions has had the opportunity to see all the evidence that there may be against them.

Auto Crime

Mr. Anthony Coombs: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to reduce the incidence of crimes involving the taking of or from motor vehicles.

Mr. Kenneth Baker: Last week I published a car theft index to draw attention to the vulnerability of certain models. Yesterday I met the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and the Association of British Insurers to discuss car crime.

Mr. Coombs: Will my right hon. Friend, while deploring the commission of 1·3 million thefts of or from motor vehicles every year and while urging motor

manufacturers to improve the security of their vehicles, confirm that a large proportion of those thefts take place when the cars are left unlocked? What advice can he give the public to prevent those thefts?

Mr. Baker: My hon. Friend is right in that the record shows that in London, for example, 27 per cent. of all cars broken into last year were unlocked. Given the value of the car or the possible value of the various pieces of equipment that may be in the car, this is most regrettable and careless. We are trying to ensure that people take much greater care of their cars, but it is also up to the car manufacturers to put higher priority on the design of more secure cars, and some car manufacturers are doing this.

Mr. Maclennan: Will the Home Secretary ask his Department and the police to report on the effectiveness of car alarms? These ear-splitting instruments, which make the night hideous for the general public, have no justification if they do not lead to apprehension of offenders or prevention of crime.

Mr. Baker: There are many types of intruder alarms and car alarms and some insurance companies give rebates off the premium for cars equipped with them. I think that people should appreciate more keenly that a car is a valuable asset, worth something between £5,000 and £10,000. Cars are often left in streets, some of which are unlit, and that is an opportunity for casual crime.

Mr. Gregory: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the reasons why we have such a high incidence of theft and unauthorised use of motor vehicles is that those who take them think that they can get away with it? Will he issue a circular to the chairman of the Magistrates Association confirming that the penalties are up to £1,000 but penalty points can be added to a driving licence and the facility to drive a vehicle can also be removed? Magistrates in many cities, including York, are sentencing those without insurance to only one quarter of the penalties that they could suffer.

Mr. Baker: We can certainly draw the attention of the magistrates to the range of penalties available. The maximum penalty for taking a vehicle without authority is a fine of £2,000, six months' imprisonment, or both. Many of the people in young offenders' institutions and juvenile prisons are there because they have committed crimes related to cars.

Mr. Sheerman: The House will know how fond the Government are of a week of exhortation and glitz as a substitute for real policies. Rather than the expenditure of £4·5 million on a Crime Prevention Week, we need properly resourced, properly thought-through crime prevention programmes. Is it not a fact that the Government have dithered for five years, when they could have introduced decent minimum car security standards and imposed them on the industry? If they had done that, we should have a much better situation now.

Mr. Baker: The country may want carefully thought-through proposals on crime prevention, but it will not get them from the Labour party. The Crime Prevention Week last week was very successful, and I am not the least bit surprised that Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen are a bit sour. I can tell the hon. Gentleman


that we are pressing our European Community partners to accept our proposals for a Community directive on car security. Any such measure will have our support.

Crime Prevention

Mr. Patrick Thompson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on new crime prevention initiatives.

Mr. Peter Lloyd: Last week we held the first-ever national crime prevention week. We launched the Home Office car theft index, which provides valuable ad vice to car owners, car buyers and car manufacturers on which cars are particularly attractive to car thieves. In addition, the safer cities programme will be brought to its full complement of 20 projects later this year, when those in Derby, Hammersmith and Fulham, Leicester and Middlesbrough come into action.

Mr. Thompson: Will my hon. Friend confirm that there has been a positive response to recent crime prevention initiatives in Norwich? In particular, will he commend the work of the crime prevention panel, crime stoppers and the neighbourhood watch scheme? Does he agree that deterrence and sentencing policy should play a very real part in crime prevention, and that we should not calmly accept the present level of crime?

Mr. Lloyd: We certainly do not accept the present levels of crime. Nor, obviously, do my hon. Friend's constituents in Norwich, who have been so active in crime prevention measures. The value of Crime Prevention Week is that we have put the problem high on the agenda. There were about 5,000 local initiatives during the week. These will be valuable in crime prevention activities over the coming weeks, months and years.

Miss Lestor: Does the Minister accept that the reoffending rate is greater among juveniles than in any other group? As was underlined earlier, there is some evidence that, in the case of young people, non-custodial sentences are more effective than any other sentences. Does the Minister agree that, as truancy may be linked to juvenile crime, it is important to remember that truancy has its roots in the lack of appropriate education and training for many young people? Unless that problem and the rising rate of unemployment among young people are tackled, juvenile crime will continue to increase.

Mr. Lloyd: I accept the hon. Lady's first point. Indeed, it reiterates the Government's policy as set out in the Criminal Justice Bill that is before the House. It is true that the tendency to reoffend is greater among young people. It would be surprising if it were not so. The in-community penalties that are now being introduced are clearly a better way to proceed than were the actions of previous Governments.

POLNET Computer Network

Mr. Colvin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received about the implementation of the POLNET computer network; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Peter Lloyd: Representations about the POLNET computer network have been received from members of the Hampshire police authority and from a number of my hon. Friends.

Mr. Colvin: My hon. Friend will be aware that the Havant district of the Hampshire police authority has conducted a successful experiment with a POLNET computer network over the past few years and now wishes to extend it county wide. For that purpose, it has applied for approval for £5 million expenditure over three years. Will the Home Office give favourable consideration to that application, which would save Hampshire the equivalent of the work of 400 policemen a year and help to combat the 22 per cent. increase in crime in the county last year?

Mr. Lloyd: Nationally, the equipment grant is up by about 25 per cent. this year, which is not sufficient, I am afraid, to meet all the information technology schemes that have been put forward, so we are currently considering a specific grant for IT projects. We shall not be in a position to decide priorities until the police national network for communications between police forces, into which the POLNET scheme would need to fit, has been evaluated later this year.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Agriculture Spending

Ql. Mr. Teddy Taylor: To ask the Prime Minister if he will raise at the next meeting of the European Council the discussions of the Council of Agriculture Ministers on the level of agriculture spending in 1991.

The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): The Agriculture Council is currently considering proposals to keep spending on the common agricultural policy in 1991 within the agricultural guidelines. I hope that the issue will be resolved before the meeting of the European Council.

Mr. Taylor: Does the Prime Minister accept that, despite the brave battle that is being fought alone by Britain and Holland to maintain the legal limits that his predecessor fought hard to achieve, Brussels will inevitably find some device or accountancy fiddle to break through, as has happened before? As the agricultural policy is causing damage to taxpayers, consumers, the third world and, now, to farmers, and as we are suffering from an uncontrollable protection racket which is riddled with graft, will my right hon. Friend consider suggesting to Brussels that it would strengthen the Economic Community and everyone else if agriculture were repatriated to individual member states?

The Prime Minister: I confirm to my hon. Friend that we shall continue to insist that the guidelines are respected. I am not sure that it would be in the interests of the United Kingdom to see the break-up and repatriation of the common agricultural policy. The danger I foresee is that separate national agricultural policies would lead to increased protectionism and considerable distortions of trade. I believe that our interest is best served in this area by common policies and by seeking to improve them. In essence, we need to win the match in Brussels, and that we shall seek to do.

Mr. Cryer: It is outrageous that the British Government are allowing to continue a common agricultural policy that is costing every family in this country £16 a week as part of the policy of the Conservatives, who have handed over in 10 years more than £40 billion to the Common Market. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is time that the food mountains were made available to the starving nations of Africa and to help the Kurds? Instead of that, the CAP ensures that food is bought on the open market. Stocks continue to soar and the Prime Minister is doing nothing about it.

The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have been in the forefront of the battle in the Community to impose guidelines and to prevent unnecessary agricultural production. The answer to his second point about food mountains being used to assist people in need is that I agree that whenever that can be done, it should be done.

Mr. Colin Shepherd: In his consideration of United Kingdom agriculture within the context of the European Community, will my right hon. Friend continue to bear it in mind the remarkable contribution that has been made by agriculture to the rural economy? Will he also bear it in mind that farm incomes are now about half what they were two years ago and that the Samaritans have expressed grave concern about the increase in suicidal thought in the farming industry? Will he bear those points in mind at all stages because we must protect the foundation of our rural economy?

The Prime Minister: I can assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to bear those matters in mind. He will know that some of the direct assistance that we have been able to give within the common agricultural policy has been aimed at areas like hill farming, where there are particular difficulties.

Engagements

Mrs. Irene Adams: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Speaker: We had better have the answer.

The Prime Minister: I made the mistake because of the tedious aspect of the regular questions that I am asked.
This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I will be having further meetings later today.

Mrs. Adams: Has the Prime Minister seen the letter in today's Evening Standard from the private secretary of the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) which says that the Government's new local tax is
not fair—grossly inequitable and hurtful"?
The lady goes on to ask why she should pay more for a small, one-bedroomed flat on her own in one part of London than the entire family of the Secretary of State for the Environment will pay in his luscious home in the west end? What answer will the Prime Minister give to that lady?

The Prime Minister: The answer that I will give to the lady is that she lives in one of the most expensive houses in London. The hon. Lady and her hon. Friends need to make up their minds. They allege with one breath that the council tax will benefit the rich, who, they say, are Conservative voters, and with the next breath that it will hurt Conservative voters.

Mr. Fry: Will my right hon. Friend find time today to examine the illustrative bills for the new council tax for those authorities where householders will pay substantially more than under the existing community charge for two people? Will he note, for example, that for the dearest house in Westminster, the tax will be less than for the cheapest house in Wellingborough? Whereas Westminster has benefited from large Government grants, Wellingborough has been penalised by loss of grants because it has traded profitably and passed the profits on to its charge payers. If I am to propose that the new tax is fair to my constituents will my right hon. Friend initiate an investigation without delay into Wellingborough's position?

The Prime Minister: If councils spend at the same standard spending assessment, they will pay the same in each band. That is the essential equity of the scheme that we have proposed. Over 70 per cent. of people will be gainers under the scheme that we have proposed. Where there are losers, there will be transitional protection and, for people on low incomes, the generous rebate scheme. That is by far the best deal that the ratepayer, the community charge payer, or in future the council taxpayer, has ever received.

Mr. Kinnock: Does the Prime Minister agree with the considered view of the Governor of the Bank of England, who recently testified that Britain's deep and worsening recession is, in his words, "home grown"?

The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, for he has asked me that question on previous occasions, I do not accept the proposition that the recession is home grown. There are a variety of causes of the downturn in world trade here and elsewhere and we cannot be immune from all those.

Mr. Kinnock: Did not the Prime Minister notice the comments of the Governor of the Bank of England on the subject of the recession's origins? He said that, while Britain
is in recession, Japan and Germany undeniably are not and our other EC partners"—
[Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will permit me to quote the Governor of the Bank of England, who is not yet a member of the Labour party. He said that, although the economies in the remainder of the European Community have slowed down, they are not in recession.
Is the Prime Minister aware that that view is borne out by the International Monetary Fund and that Britain's condition is the direct result of the Prime Minister's policies? Why will he not accept his responsibility or, better still, take action to reverse the recession that he has caused?

The Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman had examined the matter more carefully, he would have seen that the United Kingdom is coming out of its economic difficulties, while other countries are still facing deepening difficulties. He might also have observed that we have been


in a position, since joining the exchange rate mechanism, to make five cuts in interest rates—four in the past 10 weeks. At the same time, we have seen an appreciation, not a depreciation, in sterling.

Mr. Kinnock: I wish that the Prime Minister's optimism was well placed. However, the Chancellor of the Exchequer testified to the Treasury Committee a few weeks ago, rather diffidently:
I think that there arc cautious grounds for believing we, somewhere about the middle of this year, may begin to come out of recession".
The Confederation of British Industry, the Engineering Employers Federation, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Directors, the International Monetary Fund and anyone else with eyes to see, and who is concerned about the condition of our economy, knows that the right hon. Gentleman has plunged Britain into deep recession. What will he do to combat the rises in unemployment and the depression of our economy?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman, who has policies for a minimum wage that will create another million unemployed, has nothing to say about that. With interest rates and inflation having fallen and being set to fall significantly further, and with a balance of trade gap narrowing, it is difficult even for the right hon. Gentleman to deny the improvements now coming about.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: In the course of his busy day, might my right hon. Friend find a moment to visit the organ transplant exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall? If he does so, he will be told that there are 5,000 people awaiting transplants in this country and that current organ donation must double to meet that demand. In those circumstances, will it be possible to include an item on organ transplantation and the increase in the programme at the weekend meeting at Chequers that my right hon. Friend is having with health service managers?

The Prime Minister: I hope that, at my weekend meeting in Chequers, I shall be able to discuss with health professionals a wide range of matters and I shall endeavour to include that subject among them.

Mr. Mullin: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Mullin: Is the Prime Minister aware that last year, in a secret ballot supervised by the Electoral Reform Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the employees of the North of England building society voted by 257 to 81 to join the Banking Insurance and Finance Union? The response of the management was to embark upon a programme of' intimidation designed to get employees to resign from that union. Will the Prime Minister confirm that it is Government policy that employers as well as employees should be bound by the outcome of properly conducted secret ballots? Or am I being naive?

The Prime Minister: I would never accuse the hon. Gentleman of being naive. The strict answer to the first part of his question is that I was not aware of that incident. However, if it is as he describes, I can confirm that both sides should be bound by the agreement.

Mr. Arbuthnot: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 25 April.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Arbuthnot: What would happen to the figures produced for the local council tax if we were to abolish capping and competitive tendering, and raise a higher proportion of local funding from local taxes—the policies of the Labour party? Would the figures, like those in the Labour party's unfair rates proposals, go through the roof?

The Prime Minister: There is absolutely no doubt about what would happen to council tax bills under Labour's proposals—that is precisely why the figures that it has produced are wholly bogus.

Refugees (Kuwait)

Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Prime Minister what is Her Majesty's Government's policy towards receiving ecological refugees from Kuwait and surrounding countries into the United Kingdom.

The Prime Minister: All applications for entry to the United Kingdom are individually considered against the requirements of the immigration rules and in the light of compassionate considerations outside the rules.

Mr. Dalyell: Are not thousands of Kuwaitis now taking residence in countries as far away from the photochemical smog and respiratory diseases as they can, and is not the root of the problem that, frankly, Kuwait is so paralysed that Kuwaitis cannot tackle the oil inferno? In those circumstances, would the Prime Minister consider the advice from the Saudi sources that I have named that, with the Americans and the Saudis, we should step in and tackle the oil fires, as we did with operation Desert Storm?

The Prime Minister: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of the point that he wished to raise. I can assure him that the United Kingdom Government are treating the matter of the oil well fires in Kuwait very seriously. The United Kingdom industry, together with officials from both the Department of Energy and the Department of Trade and Industry, are examining how best to contribute to the resolution of the problems faced in Kuwait. A number of possibilities have been identified and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy will tomorrow lead a delegation of key British industrialists to Kuwait to pursue the specific proposals that have already been put to the Kuwaiti Government.

Business of the House

Mr. Bruce Grocott: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 29 APRIL—Second Reading of the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill.
Motions relating to the Education (National Curriculum) Orders. Details will be given in the Official Report.
TUESDAY 30 APRIL—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
Debate on motions on estimates and supplementary estimates relating to the community charge and related grants. Details will be given in the Official Report.
WEDNESDAY 1 MAY—Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate to approve the first report (Session 1990–91) of the Select Committee on Broadcasting (House of Commons Paper No. 11), followed by a debate on the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration and the Health Service Commissioner, on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
THURSDAY 2 MAY—Debate on the Royal Air Force on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 3 MAY—Private Members' Bills.
TUESDAY 7 MAY—Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (No. 3) Bill, followed by progress on Committee stage of the Finance Bill.
The House will wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, it will be proposed that the House should rise for the spring Adjournment on Thursday 23 May until Monday 3 June.
[Monday 29 April
Education ( National Curriculum) Orders

i Education ( National Curriculum) (Attainment Targets and Programmes of Study in Geography) ( England) Order (S.I. 678).
ii Education ( National Curriculum) (Attainment Targets and Programmes of Study in History) ( England) Order ( S.I. 681). 
Tuesday 30 April
Estimates and supplementary estimates: Relevant documents:
supplementary estimates for class VIII, vote 14 (community charge and rate rebate grants, emergency assistance to local authorities, non-domestic rates outturn payments, etc, England); class XV, vote 22 ( Rate rebate grants transitional relief and community charge reduction grants, Scotland); class XVI, vote 11 ( Rate rebate grants and community charge reduction grants, Wales) ( HC 377); and
the corresponding main estimates (contained in HC 236-VIII, HC 236-XV and HC 236-XVI respectively).]

Mr. Grocott: I thank the Leader of the House for agreeing to arrange a debate on the work of the ombudsman next week. In view of the fact that the ombudsman is empowered to inquire into cases of maladministration where people have been misled about the likely cost of Government action or have been

overcharged because of Government departmental incompetence, would not the prime target for the ombudsman be the shambles of the poll tax?
When may we have a debate on the criminal justice system, particularly in the light of the royal commission that has been announced?
When will we have a debate on the public expenditure White Paper? We have asked for it many times and it is long overdue. We know why the Government do not want to debate the economy and, in view of this week's information, I cannot say that I blame them for not doing so, but it is high time that we had a debate.
Will the Leader of the House confirm that, apart from the poll tax panic Bill that we had just before Easter, the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill to be debated on Monday is the first piece of new Government legislation to be introduced into the Commons since the Finance Bill was presented on 25 March? Is not that absolutely clear evidence that the Government are running out of steam?
If all the press reports are correct—that the Prime Minister is running away from a June election and talking about one in the autumn, or maybe next year—what on earth shall we find to do to fill our time here?

Mr. MacGregor: I know that the hon. Gentleman is standing in for his hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), but that was a most tedious, irrelevant and feeble set of questions. They were irrelevant both to the real issues and to the business of the week. However, I shall endeavour to answer them.
First, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome of the debate on the parliamentary ombudsman, as recommended in the report of the Procedure Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery). I cannot promise that there will be regular debates, because of the pressure of business on the House every year. Those debates will not therefore be automatic. However, it is desirable to have a debate at this stage, in particular because my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Sir A. Buck) played a distinguished part as Chairman of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration Select Committee. He will be leading in that debate and it will be an important parliamentary occasion.
As for the hon. Gentleman's request for a debate on the criminal justice system, I have already said that there is considerable pressure on Government time in the parliamentary timetable. However, I have noted his request. A large number of Government days are taken up with legislation at this time of the year, including Report stages and Third Readings. We have seen that this week, and the same will apply both next week and for some time to come. That is why I cannot promise an early debate.
That also demonstrates the utter nonsense of the point that the hon. Gentleman tried to make about the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions (No. 2) Bill being the first Government Bill since 21 March. He knows very well that most Government Bills are introduced early in the Session, as we have done. This is not a light Session for Government legislation. Already, 35 Bills are going through both Houses—rather more than in the last two Sessions. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's point was totally irrelevant to what is happening in the parliamentary timetable.
As for the hon. Gentleman's request for a debate on the public expenditure White Paper, I confirm that I hope to arrange such a debate reasonably soon. I have already made that clear. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of legislation to be got through.
The hon. Gentleman was again off beam when he suggested that the Government do not want to debate the economy. During the last few weeks, we have debated the economy on many occasions, and there will be an opportunity to debate it again for a full day next Tuesday. That will provide us with the opportunity yet again to deploy our arguments as to why our economic policies are right and to expose the total inadequacy of the Opposition's economic policies.

Mr. James Hill: My right hon. Friend will have noticed early-day motion 667.
[That this House notes with grave concern the findings of a survey by the National Association of Taxi and Private Hire Licensing and Enforcement Officers which revealed that in the 136 councils that replied 486 criminal records had actually been discovered in a 18 month period, none of which had initially been declared during the interviews which took place under the provisions of the Local Government ( Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 which required a district council not to grant a licence unless they are satisfied that the applicant is a fit and proper person to hold a taxi driver's licence; calls upon the Home Office, the Department of Transport and the Association of Chief Police Officers to co-operate in the release of past criminal records of all new applicants to the chairmen of district licensing committees in a confidential file, so as to prevent any recurrence of what occurred in Southampton where a licence was given to a convicted rapist and calls fir a similar system to be introduced as that practised in London where the Metropolitan Police have access to criminal records when determining applicants for Hackney carriage driver's licences to be expanded to all district councils in the United Kingdom.]
It points out that people in the London area are fully protected because the Metropolitan police use their police records to vet taxi driver applications, whereas outside London there is no collusion between the police computer and the chairmen of the licensing authorities. Many anomalies are growing up whereby rapists and people accused of causing grievous bodily harm, exposure and molesting young children, as well as of other offences, are managing to get a taxi driver's licence. May we have a debate as early as possible about this most serious national issue?

Mr. MacGregor: I am aware of my hon. Friend's interest in the issue and I have seen early-day motion 667. Recently the Home Office discussed with the Association of Chief Police Officers whether the police could take on the task that is mentioned in the early-day motion. The question will be looked at again in the light of the forthcoming report on Home Office scrutiny of criminal records. I suggest that that is the time when we ought to consider whether there might be some way of raising the matter in the House, although I cannot promise a debate.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: The Leader of the House will be aware that in its report on Ravenscraig the Select Committee on Trade and Industry recommended that there should be an early debate on the steel industry in the United Kingdom as a whole. Since

British Steel is now apparently engaged on dismantling the steel strip mill at Ravenscraig and transferring elements of it to south Wales. Is the Leader of the House able to say when it will be possible to have a debate on the steel industry so that both those issues, and others that affect the industry in the United Kingdom as a whole, may properly be discussed?

Mr. MacGregor: The Government are carefully considering the Select Committee report, including its recommendation for an early debate on the future of the steel industry, as the hon. and learned Gentleman requested. We shall respond in the normal way. I cannot give an undertaking that there will be an early debate in Government time, because, as I said a moment ago, there is considerable pressure on Government time. It is always open to those who have time available for debates to raise the matter.

Mr. Tim Devlin: As the recession appears to be much worse in the south than in the north, and as the strip mill to which the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East referred is moving to Teesside, is it not high time that we had a debate on the north-south divide? We could then discuss the excellent Government policies which are regenerating our regions, and which are being so ignobly glossed over by Opposition Members who wish to ignore that transformation.

Mr. MacGregor: I agree with my hon. Friend about the excellent Government policies that have made such a difference to areas such as his. There will be opportunities when we are debating economic affairs—including, perhaps, next Tuesday's debate—for him further to develop the points that he has made.

Mr. Peter Hain: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 691 on the import of Japanese tosa dogs?
[That this House draws attention to the proposal to import a second Japanese Tosa dog for breeding purposes; notes that this species of dog grows to 17 stone and was originally bred fir fighting; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to propose amendments to the law so that the import of new breeds of dog may be prohibited if it is against the public interest by virtue of the size, nature and purpose of the animal and so that, where appropriate, even where dogs are imported conditions may be attached to import licences as to the custody and breeding of such animals.]
They are the sumo wrestlers of the dog world. They can grow to a weight of 17 stone, and can stand 6 ft. on their hind legs. They are absolutely lethal, having been bred to fight to the death in public. In view of the frightening attacks on children in recent years, and as last year there were 7,400 dog attacks on postmen—leading to 5,300 days of absence—will the Leader of the House ask the Government to make a statement and to introduce early legislation to ban the import of such dogs?

Mr. MacGregor: I understand the concern about those dogs, as I said last week in response to points raised by a number of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members. I have raised the problem with the Home Office, and I have nothing to add to what I said last week.

Sir Timothy Raison: As my right hon. Friend is aware, one of the most appalliing events in Kuwait during recent months was when Iraqi scientists,


doctors and academics went to Kuwait university and the medical school—which I have just visited—and took away masses of equipment, fine libraries and so on. May we have a statement from the Government setting out what can be done to restore those objects to their rightful owners in Kuwait?

Mr. MacGregor: I understand my right hon. Friend's concern, and I shall draw the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friends in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 726, which I tabled last week, referring to the closure of two factories at Pilsley and Stonebroom in my constituency?
[That this House is appalled at the announcement of the closure of the Reeve Burgess bus factories at Pilsley and Stonebroom, in the constituency of Bolsover, with the loss of more than 160 jobs; notes that the letter signed by the Chairman of Reeve Burgess blames the Government for failing to respond positively to the proposals of the Bus and Coach Council to encourage the development of the bus as the major means of tackling congestion in our towns and cities and providing effective public transport; and calls upon the Prime Minister and his colleagues to reverse the dole-creating policies that bring so much misery to thousands of families in every area in Britain.]
The firm of Reeve Burgess is more than 100 years old, and 160 workers have been thrown on to the scrap heap by Plaxton plc, which is transferring the work to Scarborough. May we have a debate on that matter—or, better still, a debate on unemployment—so that we can discuss the issues?
Will the right hon. Gentleman have a word with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and ask him to meet the workers at Stonebroom and Pilsley so that they can put their case for saving their factory and their jobs?

Mr. MacGregor: As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, the closure of the Reeve Burgess bus factories in the east midlands—whose impact on local employment is to be regretted—is part of a rationalisation of bus manufacturing——

Mr. Skinner: No.

Mr. MacGregor: It is part of a programme of rationalisation of bus manufacturing capacity by the parent company, Plaxton, to its more modern Scarborough plant that is currently under-utilised. That is a commercial matter for the company to decide.
We welcome every opportunity to debate the Opposition's alternative employment policies and to draw attention, as I did last week and as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did earlier, to the impact on and the great increase in unemployment that would occur if the Opposition were able to implement their proposals.

Miss Emma Nicholson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, last Saturday, the Woolf report on prisons was discussed at a seminar held in All Souls? Will he consider providing time to discuss the findings of that seminar, which offer a way forward on

several aspects of the Woolf report, such as a pilot scheme and experimentation? Some of the findings were very interesting.

Mr. MacGregor: I have not had the chance to acquaint myself with that seminar. I shall draw my hon. Friend's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I do not see an opportunity in the immediate or early future for a general debate on these matters because of the pressure on the parliamentary timetable.

Mr. Peter Shore: Will the Leader of the House raise with the Foreign Secretary a matter of major importance to the whole House? Nine days ago there was tabled by the Luxembourg presidency the draft of the treaty on political union which will affect the rights of this Parliament and which seeks greatly to extend the area of control and competence of the European Community over the affairs of this nation. The treaty has not yet been made available to the House, despite many queries by hon. Members. Will the right hon. Gentleman please ensure that the draft treaty is made available without delay—there have been delays on these matters previously—so that we can study it and, if necessary, raise it with him and his colleagues at the earliest opportunity?

Mr. MacGregor: Of course I recognise the importance of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman is raising, and I shall look into the matter straight away.

Mr. Richard Tracey: My right hon. Friend will be well aware of the growing distaste of our fellow citizens for those who have deliberately not paid their share towards the cost of local government finance by not paying their community charge. Will he arrange as a matter of urgency for a statement to be made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to ensure that these lawbreakers will be pursued in the near future and until the provisions of the council tax are in place and operating?

Mr. MacGregor: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance now. It will not be necessary for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment to make a statement. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that there is great public disquiet among all those who pay the community charge—this issue is raised all the time in our constituencies—and complaints about those, often among the better-off, who do not pay their community charge and thus run the risk of causing higher charges to be imposed on those who are law-abiding and who pay. We have consistently drawn attention in the House to Labour Members and Labour councillors who have not paid. There is a great deal of criticism of them. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that those who do not pay and who should be paying will be pursued. He is right to say that they should continue to be pursued until the new council tax takes effect.

Mr. Ken Livingstone: Is it possible to have a debate next week to consider the implications now that there has been official acknowledgment that the civil service review board that heard the appeal of Colin Wallace was improperly approached by senior officers of the Ministry of Defence? Until this moment, the Government have pooh-poohed the allegation that this happened and have pushed it to one side. Now that we


have an official acknowledgment that the board was improperly approached—undoubtedly by members of MI5—may we have a debate so that everything comes out into the open?

Mr. MacGregor: I cannot promise that there will be a debate on the matter in Government time. There are so many requests for debates on other matters that it is not possible to accommodate them all. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are other ways of pursuing issues of concern to hon. Members.

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: May we have a debate as soon as possible on the true cost of eating out in London? Has my right hon. Friend heard that the Labour party plans to hold a £500-a-head dinner in London? Should it not be obliged under the Sale of Goods Act 1979 to say on its invitations that, if the dinner helps to get a Labour Government elected, it would end up costing people very much more than £500? Would those who attend be entitled to ask for a refund if they found themselves sitting next to the hon. Member for Kingston Upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott)? Is not the case——

Mr. Speaker: Order. How does the hon. Gentleman relate his question to Government responsibility?

Mr. Oppenheim: During a debate on the matter. could not Conservative Members argue that the fact that people can afford to pay so much money for such a daft dinner shows that 12 years of Tory rule have not been in vain after all?

Mr. MacGregor: I should like to be in a position to promise my hon. Friend such a debate so that he can elaborate his case even further. I am sure that we would all be pleased to hear what he had to say and many of us might think that he would make many pertinent points, but I cannot find time for that next week.

Several Hon. Members: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Ron Brown—do better than that.

Mr. Ron Brown: Since Gerald Ratner has made a fortune selling "total crap"—to use his words—may we have a debate next week on consumer protection?

Mr. MacGregor: I have seen the hon. Gentleman's early-day motion and I have equally seen that the gentleman in question said that he made his comments, which were meant to be amusing, in jest, at a time when he thought that his audience was rather sleepy. It reminds me of the comments that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) sometimes makes in the House, which I have to assume that he too is making in jest.

Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that questions should be about business for next week.

Mr. Richard Holt: My right hon Friend will, like the rest of the House, have thought that the Cleveland child sex abuse saga was behind us. Does he find it disturbing, as I do, that my constituents, whose children were kidnapped and withheld from them for such long periods, are still awaiting compensation as a result of the reluctance of those acting on behalf of the doctors and Cleveland county council who perpetrated the kidnap? Is it not time that something was done in the House of

Commons so that compensation due to such unfortunate children and their parents was paid quickly and not when the lawyers finally got round to settling it?

Mr. MacGregor: I do not know the precise details of the compensation aspect, but I am sure that my hon. Friend understands them well, and I understand the importance of the point that he makes. I shall raise it with my right hon. Friend, but I am sure that he too will be pursuing it.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement next week from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on the multi-fibre arrangement to clarify whether the Government intend to support the EEC view that the MFA currently in force should be extended for a minimum period of 17 months in order to provide proper protection for the textile industry which, as the Leader of the House knows, is suffering from short-time working and unemployment, with mills facing closure in west Yorkshire and elsewhere? The textile industry is one of the most important industries in Britain in terms of employment and negotiations on the general agreement on tariffs and trade will not be concluded before the MFA expires and will probably go on well into 1992. This is an important matter on which a statement should be made next week, and I hope that the Leader of the House will arrange for it.

Mr. MacGregor: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point on the need to extend the MFA. We have discussed this at business questions on other occasions, and I will not go into the background of the GATT talks now. The Government accept the need to extend the MFA pending conclusion of the negotiations.

Mr. Harry Greenway: May we have an early debate on events connected with horses and ponies taking place this coming weekend, so as to draw to the attention of the nation the horror of the appalling suffering of horses and ponies exported for slaughter in European abattoirs that we shall see after 1992 unless something is done? Would it not be appropriate to have a debate on early-day motions 2 and 3, which have been signed by about 150 hon. Members on both sides of the House?
[That this House abhors the prospect of a resumption in the export of horses and ponies to continental abattoirs after 1992; urges the European Community ( the European Commission, European Parliament and all member states) to recognise that the ending of British export controls linked to minimum values would mean the rounding up of Dartmoor and other wild ponies for degrading and wholly unfamiliar transport to and across Europe; and calls for changes to proposed European Community measures on the protection of animals during transport, in order to maintain restrictions which avoid cruel treatment to British horses and ponies during long journeys and at continental slaughterhouses.]

Mr. MacGregor: I am well aware of the importance of the points raised in the early-day motions. I think that my hon. Friend knows that the Government remain fully committed—I stress—fully committed to retaining control to ensure that horses and ponies are not exported from Britain for slaughter abroad. I know from the many conversations that I have had with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the matter that he takes it extremely seriously in the negotiations. He has made that clear in innumerable letters


on the matter, and many of my constituents have raised the matter with me. Therefore, even if I could find time for such a debate in the forthcoming week, I do not think that such a debate is necessary. The Government's determination to go on fighting this is clear.

Miss Kate Hoey: I am sure that the Leader of the House will wish to join me in congratulating Manchester on winning the bid for the Olympic games. Is he aware from early-day motion 744 that the Minister for Sport has not yet answered an oral question in the House of Commons?
[That this House regrets that the Minister of Sport, although appointed in the summer of 1990, has yet to answer a single oral question on sport in the Chamber; and calls on the Procedure Committee to arrange for sport to have a question time allocation, as do the Arts and Overseas Development.]
If a statement is the only way for us to discuss sport, will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for one to be made, particularly so that we can look at the Government's strategy towards building support for the British city for the Olympic games in the year 2000?

Mr. MacGregor: Hon. Members who have put down questions to my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport have not been successful in the ballot shuffle. I am sure that my hon. Friend feels that that is unfortunate because he is unable to answer oral questions. It is purely a matter of the ballot shuffle. There are ways in which the position could be made clear other than by oral statements. However, I will draw to my hon. Friend's attention what the hon. Lady has said.

Mr. Graham Riddick: Has my right hon. Friend noticed the press speculation that the Ministry of Defence has decided to buy Challenger 2 as its replacement tank? That follows from the superb performance of Challenger I during the Gulf war. Can my right hon. Friend arrange for a statement to be made in the House as soon as possible? It is vital to many of my constituents who work at David Brown Gears, because their jobs depend on that decision.

Mr. MacGregor: I cannot make any promises at this stage about when a statement might be made or whether it would be appropriate, but I shall draw my hon. Friend's remarks and request for a statement to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.

Mr. Dave Nellist: As tomorrow will be five years since the nuclear explosion and fire at Chernobyl, which was not only the worst peace-time nuclear accident—equal to 90 Hiroshimas—but the worst official cover-up, will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to be made to allay the fears of the Ukrainian community in this country that 300,000 children and adults will die from radiation-induced cancers? Will the Government increase direct medical aid to the Ukraine and introduce in this country a programme for treating Ukrainian children?

Mr. MacGregor: I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman means about a cover-up. We all recognise the serious——

Mr. Nellist: By the Soviet Government.

Mr. MacGregor: I assumed that that was what he meant. I dealt with various aspects of the Chernobyl disaster and I can assure him that there was no cover-up here.

Mr. Nellist: indicated assent.

Mr. MacGregor: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts that. Complete information was given to the public. The point that he raised is not for me, but I shall draw it to the attention of my appropriate right hon. Friends.

Mr. Tony Favell: I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has driven through Stockport, but if he has he will have had plenty of time to admire my constituency because the busiest non-dual carriageway—the A6—runs north to south—or south to north if one is going to Manchester to see the Olympic site there. May we have an early debate on the disturbing news that the A6(M) bypass, which two weeks ago the Department of Transport said was about to be started, is now likely to be delayed or even scrapped because of a Brussels directive which states that there should be environmental consideration of the project? Is not that intrusion into Stockport—and indeed, British—affairs unnecessary, unwarranted and cheeky?

Mr. MacGregor: I do not know the details of the case, but I understand my hon. Friend's concern about the road improvements. I cannot promise a statement for the reason that I have already given—there is great pressure on the timetable—but I am sure that he will draw the matter to my right hon. Friend's attention.

Mr. Eddie Loyden: Will the Leader of the House reflect on his answer to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) about the unemployed? Does he agree that there are more than 2 million reasons why the House should debate unemployment? His words will bring anger to the unemployed because of the way in which he has virtually disregarded the appeal for a debate in the House on such an important and serious matter.

Mr. MacGregor: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can have been listening not only to what I have said on many occasions about unemployment issues, but to what many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have said. As we are discussing the business statement, all I will say now is that there have been many opportunities to discuss employment and unemployment issues. I have welcomed those opportunities because I believe that our policies have ensured that our unemployment levels are still below the European average, and that the number in employment is higher than in most other European countries and a good deal higher than it was even four or five years ago. We have plenty of opportunities to make those points. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no lack of concern. The fact that we can debate the issues so often shows our concern for employment policies to be debated properly. In the coming week, there will again be opportunities to do so.

Mr. Barry Field: Would my right hon. Friend arrange for an urgent debate on the restructuring of local government so that we can make it clear to the electorate, before the elections for borough and district councils next week, that this time the Government intend to listen to the voice of the people rather than to the petty


political posturings of councillors who hope that their councils will survive? A debate would especially make it clear to constituencies such as Isle of Wight, that have already had a Boundary Commission recommendation, that the elections are nothing to do with the restructuring of local government because that restructuring still requires primary legislation in the House, which will not happen before 1992?

Mr. MacGregor: It is not necessary to have a debate, because my hon. Friend has made the point clearly himself. To make it clear yet again, I point out that we have, as my hon. Friend knows, issued a consultation document on restructuring, and there will be consultation over the summer on that. The intention is that there will be legislation on that issue. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the restructuring cannot take place until that is done. He is right to say that it is not an immediate issue in the forthcoming local elections. What is far more important in those elections is which councils are more likely to deliver the best services at the best value for money, and therefore at the lowest cost to the community charge payer.

Mr. Greville Janner: Following the happy and successful visit to this country of President Lech Walesa of Poland, may we have a debate on the help that not only Poland but other eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Soviet Union need from us? Bearing in mind the fact that a group of Members of Parliament will shortly go to Poland to visit, among other places, Auschwitz, and that they are very concerned about the growth of anti-sernitism in those countries, will the right hon. Gentleman ask his colleagues who deal with those countries to emphasise to them that it is important to the House that, if they want that help, they should look to human rights in their own countries and not least to the rights of the Jewish communities?

Mr. MacGregor: I shall have the pleasure of being with the President this evening. I am sure that the point is frequently made that the United Kingdom has given considerable aid to Poland. That includes the cancelation of a large element of the debt that Poland has incurred, which is an important contribution in itself and is well recognised. However, I cannot promise the hon. and learned Gentleman an early debate on the matter, for the reason that I have already given.

Mr. Keith Vaz: Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement next week on the progress that has been made into the claims of the nuclear test veterans? He will know that I have raised the case of John Hall, a constituent of mine, on a number of occasions. We have tabled an early-day motion and I met the Prime Minister to discuss the case. I had a call today from the royal infirmary in Leicester to say that Mr. Hall's condition has deteriorated rapidly. We are in a race against time. Will the Leader of the House please arrange for a statement next week, and will he bring my comments to the attention of the Prime Minister?

Mr. MacGregor: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that I cannot comment on the merits of the individual case, although I am very sorry to hear the information that he has just given to the House. I cannot

make any promises about a statement next week, but I will, in the normal way, draw the attention of my appropriate right hon. Friend to his comments.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: May we have a debate on the first report of the Select Committee on Members' Interests on the question of Committee chairmanships? May we have an assurance that we shall have a debate before the end of the Session?

Mr. MacGregor: I would not wish to give an absolute assurance because of the pressures on the timetable. As I hope is clear from the two debates on one day which we shall have next week, I am anxious to find time for debates on parliamentary matters. Next week's debate on broadcasting is the urgent one because we need to get on with the arrangements for the permanent televising of the House; that is why that debate is first. I know of the other Select Committee report and I am in the process of studying it. However, I cannot be sure when we will debate it.

Mr. Harry Cohen: May we have an urgent debate on the housing crisis that continues unabated, especially in London? Because of the Government's policies, council rents have gone up by three times the level of inflation. The Government allocation for repairs and decorations in my borough has been cut by 30 per cent. this year, virtually no new homes are being built, and people who have huge numbers of points are still stuck on the council waiting list and cannot get a home. Ministers are well housed; why do they not care about those who are not?

Mr. MacGregor: For reasons I have already given, I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman that there will be an opportunity for a debate on those matters, but there are plenty of opportunities to question Ministers on housing policies generally, and we have very good and robust responses on them.

Mr. David Clelland: Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Cabinet has discussed the replacement for the Chieftain tank, and that the Challenger 2 tank will be the preferred replacement? Will there be an announcement on that next week, or is he going to tell us that, as Leader of the House, he does not know?

Mr. MacGregor: I cannot add to what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Riddick) a few moments ago.

Mr. David Trimble: We welcome the provision for a debate on the omsbudsman next week, but can the Leader of the House confirm that that debate will also include the Northern Ireland ombudsman and the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints, who is responsible for complaints?
Is the Leader of the House in a position to respond to the report of the Procedure Committee on Select Committees? Is he in a position to provide for Select Committees for all the Government Departments? Does he agree that it is quite wrong for the internal procedures of the House not to be considered on their merits but to be left open to the influence of political horse-trading elsewhere involving foreign countries?

Mr. MacGregor: On the first point, I shall have to check, but obviously we want the debate on the ombudsman, since it is an important debate, to range over as many ombudsman issues as possible. If I may, I shall check exactly what motion we will put down and let the hon. Gentleman know.
On the second point, I hope shortly to give the response of the Procedure Committee's report on Select Committees.

Mr. David Winnick: May I press the Leader of the House again for a debate on the deepening recession all over the country, not least in the west midlands, where hardly a day goes by without news of further redundancies and, in some cases, closures? How many more people must suffer as a result of Government policies—policies which, to use the phrase of a certain store owner, may well be described as crap?

Mr. MacGregor: There is to be a full day's debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill next week, and as the Bill contains a number of tax measures of great importance and help to companies, it will be possible to raise economic issues in that debate.

Mr. Paul Flynn: Before the debate on community charges next week, will the right hon. Gentleman direct the Government's attention to the perverse effect of the so-called council tax on one Welsh council where, according to the preliminary figures, virtually half the bills will go up substantially? Detailed analysis has proved that, in Monmouth, bills will go up by a ferocious amount. Monmouth constituents will be the worst hit in Wales as a result of the Government's proposed changes. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider that as a matter of urgency?

Mr. MacGregor: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will make clear responses on that matter. I hope to be visiting Monmouth shortly, and I shall do the same.

Mr. William O'Brien: Will the Leader of the House allow time for a serious and urgent discussion on the provision of a heart research centre in the Leeds area to serve the Yorkshire and south Humberside region? Eight months ago, a fund was started to raise money for the heart research centre, but it has now been scrapped. The future of services at Killingbeck hospital hangs in the balance because of the attitude of the Yorkshire regional health authority. This is a serious and urgent matter and the campaign that has been announced by the Secretary of State for Health makes it more urgent. May we have a debate on the provision of a research centre, which is needed in the Yorkshire and Humberside region?

Mr. MacGregor: From what the hon. Gentleman says, that is primarily a matter for the regional health authority. I simply cannot say that there will be time for a debate in Government time. The hon. Gentleman will know that there are opportunities for Members to raise in other ways in the House issues which cause them concern.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Is it part of the Leader of the House's thinking to have a debate on the extremely well written report by the Select Committee on rain forest destruction? Is there any possibility next week of a statement in response to the moving report by the Quakers from Baghdad which foreshadows hepatitis, meningitis, cholera, diphtheria and typhoid and in particular, the moving statement of a Karbala doctor who needed water. He said:
To get water I need electricity. To get electricity I need a generator. To work the generator I need fuel. To get fuel I need a tanker. There are no tankers.
We are facing a health disaster. May we debate it?

Mr. MacGregor: On the latter point, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we have had a statement recently on some of the subjects that he has raised. I will draw his comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. On the Select Committee report, the hon. Gentleman will recognise from the many pressures on me for debates in the House on many different subjects, including matters dealt with by other Select Committees, that it simply is not possible to accommodate them all in the near future.

Mr. Dalyell: On the Consolidated Fund?

Mr. MacGregor: If the matter can be debated in a Consolidated Fund debate, it certainly will not be the Consolidated Fund debate that we shall have on Tuesday week. That relates to the motion that we shall debate on Tuesday evening. Perhaps this is an opportunity to say that the Consolidated Fund debate in the following week will follow from that motion and will be mainly automatic. It is not possible to debate the Select Committee report.
I have noted the hon. Gentleman's request for a debate on the Select Committee report to which he referred.

BILL PRESENTED

SOCIAL SECURITY (CONTRIBUTIONS)

Mr. Secretary Newton, supported by Mr. Secretary Baker, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Heseltine, Mr. Secretary Rifkind, Mr. Secretary Hunt, Mr. Secretary Lang, Mr. Nicholas Scott and Miss Ann Widdecombe, presented a Bill to introduce contributions under the Social Security Act 1975 in respect of cars made available for private use and car fuel: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 145.]

Natural Heritage (Scotland) Bill [Lords]

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

New Clause 1

POWERS OF SNH WITH REGARD TO STORAGE OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE

`(1) It shall be an offence for any person to store radioactive waste under the land without first informing SNH of their intention to do so.

(2) Where SNH are of the opinion that any such dumping could result in damage to the natural heritage they shall serve notice of that fact on the person proposing the storage.

(3) Where such notice has been served it shall be an offence to commence or continue with the storage without the permission of the Secretary of State for Scotland.

(4) The Secretary of State shall not give such permission without first consulting SNH.

(5) For the purposes of this Act "radioactive waste" has the meaning assigned to it by section 18 of the Radioactive Substances Act 1960. "Land" includes land covered by water and the definition of land in section 21 of this Act shall not apply for the purposes of this section.'.—[Mr. Wilson.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Brian Wilson: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am glad that we have begun the debate early. The Opposition certainly do not intend to prolong the proceedings unnecessarily. However, in the spirit of our proceedings in Committee, I hope that we can have a series of fairly short but substantial debates before we come to Third Reading.
New clause 1 is of tremendous importance to the Scottish environment and will attract a great deal of interest in Scotland. I hope that at the end of the debate, we shall hear from the Minister something of substance about the Government's attitude towards adopting Dounreay as a site for nuclear dumping. There is no doubt that there is overwhelming opposition in Scotland to that proposal. It would be no bad thing if the Government, who this week have made some efforts to get on the right side of public opinion, came out and said that they, in common with every other party represented in the House, will have no truck with the proposal.
It may be worth pointing out at the start of the debate what a lonely figure the Minister poses. This may be the only Scottish debate in which the Minister replying to the debate is the only Scottish Tory Member in the House of Commons. I do not know where the other Scottish Tory Members are. The mind boggles about where they might be. As our discussions proceed, I hope that there will be some evidence that they exist and have some interest in these matters. We are discussing a matter that may be peculiarly of interest to the Highlands but is also of great interest to all parts of Scotland, including several of the constituencies represented by Conservative Members. I know that one has to trail around a little to find any Scottish Tory Members, but in this matter the Perthshire constituencies at least are directly affected by the transport issues. We shall be watching closely for the presence of those hon. Members as our discussions continue.
This is an important debate, with four purposes. The first is simply to give an airing on the Floor of the House of Commons to the prospect of using Dounreay or perhaps Caithness for deep nuclear storage. I think that it is overdue and I am pleased that, by tabling the new clause,

the Labour party has succeeded in having a debate that will be noted by all parties and people interested in the issue.
4.15 pm
The second reason for having the debate is to flush out the Government's views on deep storage at Dounreay and in particular to force them to defend their apparent willingness to trample upon local democracy. In particular, I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us today whether it is the Secretary of State's intention to overrule the planning authority on the latest application by Nirex for 6,000 test bores in the same way that he overruled that authority on the issues of both the structure plan and the initial test bores. It would be helpful for guidance if the Minister told us whether it is once again the intention of the Secretary of State to thwart local democracy and to overrule the planning authority.
A frisson of excitement has run through the House as a second Conservative Member has entered. We all know of the interest in these matters of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), so we are not surprised to see him.
The third reason for having the debate is to state unequivocally that the possibility of Dounreay being used as a nuclear dump will immediately vanish with the election of a Labour Government. The fourth reason for having it, particularly appropriate in the context of this Bill, is to encourage—I hope that the Minister will join in this encouragement—the new Scottish Natural Heritage to express a view on this and other enormously important environmental issues, rather than steer clear of them, as has sometimes been the practice of the Nature Conservancy Council, for fear of offending its political masters. It was remarked at a meeting that we had with the Highland regional council yesterday, when some people were down from Caithness, that it was deemed very odd in Caithness that the Nature Conservancy Council is prepared to tell people where they can and cannot cut peat but at the same time desists from taking or expressing a view on the desirability of having a nuclear dump on their doorsteps.
The transport issue is also important, apart from the immediate impact within Caithness. This is where the whole of Scotland becomes directly involved, because part of the price that would be paid, if by any chance this were allowed to go ahead, would be that nuclear loads would be passing through Scotland on an extremely regular basis. There is no need to take my word for this; I have a letter from Nirex which was sent to Mr. Mervyn Rolfe, the excellent Labour candidate for Perth and Kinross. Mr. Rolfe had asked Nirex how many trainloads would be passing through Perth in the event of deep underground repositories being established at Dounreay.
I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) is not present to hear this information, but Mr. McInerney, the managing director of Nirex, was nothing if not frank. He said:
Consultants acting for Nirex are carrying out assessments of the transport implications of moving radioactive wastes to Dounreay or Sellafield. Should the repository be sited at Dounreay, we estimate that about 15 trains a week would pass through Perth. Road transport would be used infrequently to Dounreay … Should the repository be sited at Sellafield, only waste generated at Dounreay would pass through Perth. This would amount to around one small train load per week.
Mr. McInerney went on to say:


the likelihood of an accident involving a train carrying radioactive waste of sufficient severity for the release of radioactivity from a waste container is extremely remote.
It is only fair for me to place that caveat on the record.
I should have thought that the great majority of the constituents represented by the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross, and those in all points north and south who are threatened with the prospect of 15 trainloads per week of radioactive nuclear cargoes passing through their communities, would, to say the least, be disturbed by that prospect. It is not a regular trade that Scotland wishes to see. In addition to the security and safety problems that would immediately be created in Caithness itself, monumental problems of security along the route would be created. We have it on the authority not of any political scaremonger but of Nirex itself that that is the volume of cargo that would be involved if Dounreay were selected and approved by the Government for this purpose.
I was astonished to read in the Glasgow Herald of 23 January 1991 the headline
Nuclear dump safety 'cannot be guaranteed'".
Once again, it might be supposed that this was scaremongering by some vested interest opposed to the selection of Dounreay. Not so. With your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I shall quote a little of the report. It states:
The nuclear waste agency Nirex will not be able to guarantee that Britain's first national nuclear waste repository will be completely safe until after it has been built.
This was confirmed yesterday"—
not by a scaremonger—
by a Nirex spokesman at the agency's headquarters at Didcot in Oxfordshire. The admission astonished Highland region, the planning authority which would have to consider any planning application for a nuclear waste repository at Dounreay.
I have no doubt that it will astonish hon. Members who are hearing it today.
The report continues:
The Nirex spokesman said the company would select Dounreay … or Sellafield … as its preferred site for a national repository for low and intermediate waste some time between November and the beginning of 1992.
`After that we would submit a planning application'.
In this remarkable statement, according to the Glasgow Herald the spokesman went on to say
the regulatory authorities, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Pollution, would be able to form a provisional view of the acceptability of the repository, but Nirex would not be able to present its full safety case.
The newspaper goes on to quote the Nirex spokesman directly:
We will only be in a position to do that once the repository is actually built and we have managed to established quite conclusively if there are any problems with the geology of the site.
Only then would the regulatory authorities be in a position to inspect everything before granting an operating licence.
I have no need to embellish or embroider, because the case is here in black and white from the Nirex spokesman. He continued:
With the present schedule that might not be until the year 2003 or 2004, and we"—
that is, Nirex—
might have spent up to £500 million constructing the repository but we could still end up walking away from it. That's the risk.
The report continues:
Highland regions vice-convenor, Councillor Peter Peacock, said yesterday:

`It beggars belief that Nirex could suggest going forward to a planning enquiry without considering fully the safety case, probably the most worrying aspect to the public.'
Hon. Members on both sides of the House would be astonished if the proposition were that any Secretary of State should give planning approval, in any shape or form, for Nirex to go ahead at Dounreay on such a basis.
I was most interested to read in The Daily Telegraph of 11 March 1991 a report under the heading
Nuclear chief attacks lack of information on dump's safety".
Once again, I am pleased to quote the source. Here too, it is not some over-enthusiastic anti-nuclear person, but Professor John Knill, chairman of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee. I quote from The Daily Telegraph report by Mr. Roger Highfield, the newspaper's science editor:
The failure of British Nuclear Fuels to have a full safety assessment of £2·7 billion national nuclear waste dump ready in time for a public inquiry has been attacked by the Government's most senior adviser on the industry.
The BNF argument that safety at the site is a matter for experts rather than for the public has been branded as unsatisfactory by Professor Knill ….
Government nuclear waste advisers wanted a public discussion at the inquiry of the technical case for the safety of the repository, the location of which was expected to be announced later this year.
But by the time of the inquiry, according to Mr. Christopher Harding, chairman of BNFL, one of the principal shareholders of NIREX,
we won't have the full safety case. There's a huge amount of work involved … We believe it is desperately important to get on. This may be seen by the public as the industry trying to pressurise it through … That would worry me.
If it worries Mr. Harding that BNFL and Nirex are seen as trying to pressurise the development through on that basis, it must be worrying to the people of Caithness and all who are living on the doorstep of the proposed development and along the transport route.

Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that I was late arriving because I was involved in discussions concerning the naval base at Rosyth, where we have an interest in nuclear capability. He will know that a number of his hon. Friends, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and I have today been trying to see what can be done to keep the base open.

Mr. Wilson: That is one of the most convincing notes to the teacher that I have heard for some time.

Dr. John Reid: My hon. Friend will not object to my intervening, since I have listened to all his speech. He is to be thanked for the revelations that he has produced, particularly the revelation that not only will the events he has been describing take place without guarantees about safety but that, in one case, Nirex has admitted that £500 million may be spent before the safety issue has been analysed. Did my hon. Friend go on to say that at that stage Nirex would be prepared to walk away from it? Can my hon. Friend think of any other example of an enterprise, private or public—with the exception of the poll tax—where hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent and the concern involved has walked away from that enterprise?

Mr. Walker: Ground nuts.

Mr. Wilson: The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) suggests a strange analogy.
At least Nirex might have the grace to apologise and admit that it has done a great public disservice. It is astonishing to think that it is intending to spend £500 million on a £2·7 billion development without knowing whether the geological conditions are right and the safety conditions can be met. It would be absurd beyond belief if, while all of that was going on, the new agency set up to be concerned with all aspects of the Scottish environment was the one organisation not charged with having responsibility to comment on what was going on.
Creating the repository in Caithness—even if, at the end of the day, Nirex were to walk away from it and decided that £500 million could be written off to experience—would have an immense effect on the Caithness environment. Even more serious is the prospect of Nirex going on, after the expenditure of £500 million, to spend the entire £2·7 billion in creating the facility. Then the trains would roll and Dounreay would be identified with the nuclear dumping capital of Europe. That, ultimately, is unacceptable.
Yesterday, some.of my hon. Friends and I—I should say representatives of the three opposition parties; as is predictable in these matters, no representative of the Government was present—met representatives of Highland regional council, who came to London to brief Scottish Members on the case against nuclear dumping at Dounreay.
Councillor Jim Fry, a member of that delegation, worked, until he retired, at Dounreay and by no stretch of the imagination can he be described as anti-nuclear. He said that the Caithness people had been, and remained, loyal to the nuclear industry but knew that Nirex was trying to exploit that loyalty to an end that was unacceptable to the Caithness people.
They know that Nirex is not interested in Caithness because of its geological suitability. Nirex has not gone round the country in good faith looking for the area that is most suitable geologically. When it did so, it came up with a site somewhere in the Tory heartland of middle England. We remember that, in the week the general election was declared in 1987, the Government told Nirex that it could not go there because some marginal Tory seats were involved. That was the ,outcome of the geological examination. A political decision was taken to tell Nirex that it could not go ahead with its choice of site.
4.30 pm
We know that Nirex has not arrived at Dounreay because of its unique geological suitabilty, which for this project above all others should be the one factor that matters. What Nirex knows is that Dounreay and Caithness have a long history of involvement in the nuclear industry. As Councillor Fry said, they have been loyal to the nuclear industry and have been good neighbours to it, as indeed the nuclear industry has been to them in the view of most people in that part of the world.
Nirex saw the difficulty of Caithness as its opportunity. It saw vulnerability in Caithness because jobs were to be lost. The place had a nuclear background. When other places said that they did not want anything to do with Nirex and deep storage, Nirex decided that, if it moved into Caithness while it was vulnerable, the people might swallow the proposition. That was the crude thinking behind Nirex's proposal for deep storage at Dounreay.
As Councillor Fry also said, the people of Caithness and, indeed, of Scotland are capable of making the distinction. There is no overwhelming hostility to the civil nuclear industry in Scotland. Certainly there is none in my constituency where a nuclear power station is the biggest employer, or in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson). We live with civil nuclear power. Whatever the rights and wrongs of its emphasis in our energy programme, they are not being debated today.
The people of Caithness can differentiate between playing a positive and mutually rewarding part in the British civil nuclear programme and being used as a dump simply because unemployment looms and because they have a background in the industry. They have made that distinction successfully.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: Does not the hon. Gentleman also agree that the people of Caithness have, through a referendum, shown everyone how overwhelming is the opposition of the community to the use of Dounreay as a site for the disposal of nuclear waste? Is he aware that in other areas of Scotland where referendums have been conducted there has always been overwhelming democratic opposition? Is not that a strange contrast to the effect of four Conservative voices that were raised in 1987 when there was a threat to Huntingdonshire and other places in England?

Mr. Wilson: I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I agree entirely with the point that she has made. At the briefing which we both attended yesterday. Highland regional council stressed the outcome of the referendum in Caithness. Propaganda had suggested that there was majority support for the proposal in Caithness and only voluble minority opposition. That was put to the test in a local referendum and was shown clearly to be untrue there, as in other parts of Scotland. No doubt Nirex was taken aback by the result of the referendum, because it almost certainly thought that Caithness was one of the few places in Britain where it would get a warm welcome. I do not want to introduce inter-party dissent among Opposition parties, but I suspect that Lord Thurso might not have been completely dissociated from encouraging that belief.
Caithness does not want Dounreay to be the repository for nuclear waste for Britain or Europe. Scotland does not want it to be there. The Labour party says that the proposal will not go ahead when we are in office. Only the Government are ambivalent about the idea.
The new clause is perfectly clear. It states:
It shall be an offence for any person to store radioactive waste under the land without first informing SNH of their intention to do so.
To say that it is an offence for any person perhaps draws it a little widely because the average citizen would not do that. We mean Nirex. We are using the Bill as a vehicle for a debate on this issue but it is right to stress that there is an environmental interest and that many industries in the highlands and islands depend on the image of a clean and healthy environment, which would be fatally tarnished by the presence of a nuclear dump at Dounreay. I hope that the Minister will join me in encouraging Scottish National Heritage to express views on the matter.
I do not expect the Minister to say that he will write the new clause into the Bill. However, I draw a parallel with similar debates in Committee on fish farming, shipping in the Minch, forestry and other environmental interests in


Scotland, when the Minister's response was that there was no need to write into the Bill specific responsibility to make representations on those issues because the terms of Scottish National Heritage are drawn so widely that it can and will be expected to do so.
If the Minister says today that he is prepared to encourage Scottish National Heritage to come forward with views on this matter, it will be a great step forward and will embolden and strengthen the new agency from the outset. However, we stress the environmental, economic and wider national interests. To say that Nirex will provide jobs is a false bait: for every job that is gained in the short term, two or three will be lost in the long term because of damage done to the image and environmental purity of the highlands and islands.
I shall not prolong the debate, as we have made our point. We are delighted to have the opportunity to debate this subject and I hope that the Minister will take on board the strength of feeling on this subject which will be expressed in the debate and which exists throughout Scotland.

Mrs. Ray Michie: It may be helpful if hon. Members cast back their minds to the days before the 1987 election, when the Government made the most extraordinary bare-faced about-turn that the Tory party has ever made—it was even more extraordinary than the Government's about-turn on the poll tax. The then Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) made a statement in the House on I May 1987 about a letter that he had received from Nirex. He said:
Nirex … concludes that, although a safe near-surface disposal facility could certainly be developed at any of the four sites currently being investigated, the economic advantages of separate near-surface, low-level waste disposal are nothing like as great as Nirex earlier thought".
The four sites to which he referred are in constituencies represented by Conservative Members of Parliament. Bradwell is in Colchester, South and Maldon represented by John Wakeham; Fulbeck is in Grantham, represented by Douglas Hogg——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should refer to the constituencies and not the names of Members.

Mrs. Michie: The third site is Estow; and the fourth is South Killingholme.
The right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury went on:
Nirex will therefore now concentrate on identifying a suitable location for a deep multi-purpose facility for both intermediate-level and low-level waste".—[Official Report, 1 May 1987; Vol. 115, c. 504.]
We would do well to remember what happened then. I recall extremely well the day when I heard the announcement on the radio. Later that day, in a speech at Pitlochry, I said that the Secretary of State for the Environment had made the decision because he knew that Conservative seats would be lost unless he made this about-turn and, having done so, he need not allow Nirex to turn its attention north of the border. Nirex did just that very thing.
Although the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) spoke at length about Dounreay and

Caithness, I want to make it clear that my opposition to a nuclear waste dump or deep level storage relates to the whole of Scotland, particularly the highlands and islands. The Liberal Democrats believe and have proposed on many occasions that there should be on-site, aboveground, dry storage until safe methods of long-term disposal and management are found.
I hope that the Minister will say how much money is being put into research. Nirex has been spending millions of pounds boring holes in Caithness—that money could have been used for research. The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North spoke of the billions of pounds that are being used. We need to know what effort is being made in research. This is not a case of the "Not in my back yard" syndrome. We have to acknowledge that we must look after our own waste, and we do not advocate it being sent up and down the country into England or wherever for deep disposal. We know that we must look after our waste on site.
The Nirex document, "The Way Forward", identified 35 per cent. of the United Kingdom as suitable for waste disposal. I recall that the people of Argyll and Bute were alarmed, as I was, because the map in the document identified districts in my constituency such as Islay, the Ross of Mull and Iona as suitable geological sites, which was unbelievable. So concerned were local people that they organised a petition to be sent to Nirex. More than 10,000 signatures were collected in various locations in support of the policy of the local council—Argyll and Bute district council—which had already taken a decision that it would
as a matter of policy, oppose with the utmost vigour, any attempt to place a repository within the area of Argyll and Bute district or under the seabed around the shores.
That is a quote from a so-called independent council, which is not Labour, Conservative, or even Liberal Democrat or Scottish National party—all those parties are represented on it. A cross-party view was taken on the issue.
I want to highlight the fact that I am talking about the highlands and islands and the whole of Scotland, not just Dounreay. It is disgraceful that the then Secretary of State should have overruled in such a cavalier manner the decision of the elected members of the Highlands regional council to refuse Nirex planning permission to drill test bore holes. What right had he, one man at the Scottish Office, to take such a decision? We have no way of making him account for or justify his actions. It is another reason why the Government refuse to set up a Scottish Select Committee: because they can thus get away with such decisions and nobody can question them or the Scottish Office on exactly what is going on.
We have heard much about the clean image of the highlands and islands, and I cannot stress too strongly how important that is. To go ahead with a nuclear dump in that district would destroy that image at a stroke. It would harm farming, fishing, tourism and the whisky industry—all of which depend on the district being kept pollution-free and environmentally safe.
4.45 pm
There is another threat coming down the line. In an exclusive report in the Sunday Mail on 21 April, Angus Macleod stated:
A total of 17 sites around Scotland's coast are being touted as possible 'graveyard' sites for radioactive submarine hulks".


Some five or six of the districts mentioned are in my constituency—Loch Goil, Campbeltown, Rothesay, Loch Striven and Loch Fyne. Are we to be threatened with a nuclear dump and then threatened with nuclear submarines being parked for goodness knows how long in that beautiful district of the highlands?
Unless the Minister gives a categorical assurance today that there will be no nuclear dumping in this district, it makes nonsense of the Bill and its fine words about caring for and protecting the environment. The Minister has already been asked, and I push him again to answer the question—what are the views of the Scottish Nature Conservancy Council and the Scottish Natural Heritage Agency? If they have not already done so, they must make a statement; they cannot sit on the fence. If they do, their credibility will sink even lower.
As we have heard, the Government can pronounce happily about what should happen in the so-called flow country, but are they not going to make a statement on the dumping of waste in the highlands? If they do not, their membership, like the membership of the health boards appointed by the Secretary of State, must be called into question.
The dumping of waste is not a decision for the Minister, the Secretary of State or the Department of the Environment, but a decision only for the people of Scotland.

Mr. John Home Robertson: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) that there are a wide range of well-canvassed reasons why Dounreay would not be an appropriate site for a repository for nuclear waste. I strongly agree that there must be effective safeguards for the environment, and in every other respect.
The proposals of Nirex and other authorities for the disposal of nuclear waste are widely misunderstood. The subject needs some well-informed debate—perhaps we can start it here this afternoon. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (M rs. Michie) referred to the remains of decommissioned nuclear submarines. We already have one lying at Rosyth—HMS Dreadnought—which has been there for many years and has now been joined by HMS Churchill, which is being decommissioned. I do not know whether HMS Warspite is there too—it may be at Devonport. That is an example of what goes wrong if decisions are not taken about where such material is to be stored in the long term. At present, the submarines are lying on the dockside in Rosyth. A decision must be taken about what to do with them.
I have a particular interest in the nuclear industry, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North. He has the Hunterston power station in his constituency, while I have the Torness power station in mine. Yesterday, I received a parliamentary answer to a question that I had put to the Secretary of State for Scotland. I had asked him to make a statement on his policy for the storage of used fuel from nuclear installations in Scotland after 1993. I received the following answer from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart):
Questions about operational aspects of nuclear installations in Scotland, such as spent fuel storage, are a matter for the operators concerned. Scottish Nuclear Ltd. have recently put forward proposals for the long-term storage of spent fuel

at both Hunterston and Torness; these proposals are currently being evaluated."—[Official Report, 24 April 1991; Vol. 189, c. 458.]
That is a major departure from the original planning consents for both Hunterston and Torness.
The understanding was that the intermediate waste would be stored on site in a vault that is part of the integral design of the power station and that low-level waste would be transported to Sellafield. We need not get unduly worked up about low-level waste—overalls, boots and so on—but we understood that the fuel, probably the most sensitive material of all, would be taken away either for long-term storage or reprocessing at Sellafield. The Minister's reply, however, was that there had been a proposal to store not only the waste substances but also the spent fuel on site.
I understand that, from now on, Torness will produce approximately 37 tonnes of waste fuel each year. Over the full life of the power station, therefore, that amounts to 1,200 tonnes of waste fuel. The spent fuel is not being reprocessed at present. There is no call for advanced gas-cooled reactor spent fuel to be reprocessed, as no more AGR reactors are being built. The Government are actively considering the proposal, therefore, that spent fuel should be stored in dry stores at Torness and Hunterston. That material continues to generate heat for about 50 years, after which it is possible to store it in an underground repository, were there to be such an underground repository. Nirex is considering constructing an underground repository but that will not be for spent fuel, so we do not yet know where it would go. The new suggestion is that it should be stored in dry stores at Torness and Hunterston.
This is a long-term problem. If Torness is to be decommissioned in 2030, the earliest possible date for clearing the dry store, if such a store were to be built at Torness, would be 2080, and that would depend upon whether by then a long-term store would be available for the material.
All these issues ought to be properly considered and evaluated, but the fundamental issue is whether it would be better for there to be a single national processing and storage plant, as at Sellafield—a specialist facility to handle all this material—or whether there should be a proliferation of smaller stores dotted around the country at the various nuclear installations.
What worries me about the suggestion that there should be a dry store at Torness is the evidence concerning the only dry store in the United Kingdom—at Wylfa power station in Anglesey—where Nuclear Electric has a dry store. According to an article in the New Scientist of 2 March 1991:
Rotting fuel rods in the world's largest dry store for spent radioactive fuel in North Wales could cause a catastrophic fire. The manesium 'can' which surrounds the rods has corroded so badly that the radioactive metal is exposed. If water penetrates the cladding of the element it can react with the metallic uranium fuel. One of the corrosion products is uranium hydride, which can ignite spontaneously in air. If enough uranium hydride burns, it can ignite the metallic uranium and release the highly radioactive fission products `held' in the uranium bar. This would constitute a major nuclear accident … The design of the facilities at Wylfa forms the basis of a new store for spent fuel from advanced gas-cooled and pressurised water reactors. Nuclear Electric has been looking at a potential site for such a store at Heysham, in northwest England. It would like to be able to keep spent fuel in dry storage for up to 100 years., removing the need for early reprocessing.


We understand that similar dry stores are now being suggested for Hunterston and Torness.
I recognise the value and importance of the nuclear industry to the economy of both my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North. I recognise that these nuclear installations are doing a valuable job and that they will continue to do so for a long time. However, well-considered decisions must be taken about what to do with the waste products—in particular, about what to do with the spent fuel.
We are debating the possibility of providing an underground repository somewhere in Scotland. The environmental issues must be discussed. I have yet to form a firm view about the best thing to do, in the light of the evidence. However, my instinct is to say that it would be far better to continue to reprocess the material in a specialist facility, such as that at Sellafield, rather than that there should be a proliferation of small stores at nuclear sites all over the country where things could go wrong, as they appear to have gone wrong at Wylfa.
There should be the fullest and the most open public debate about what to do with this material. All these matters could then be properly considered, and acceptable decisions reached from the point of view of the nuclear industry and the wider public.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: In supporting new clause 1, I wish to refer to amendments that were tabled but not accepted. I have been asked during the last few days why Scottish Members of Parliament should be considering the disposal of nuclear waste when dealing with this Bill. That is an absurd question. The most critical environmental question that faces the people of Scotland is the disposal and transport of nuclear waste and its management. Therefore, the amendments that my hon. Friends and I tabled dealt with the transport of nuclear waste.
Many people believe that this problem relates specifically to Dounreay and the highlands of Scotland, but the whole of the country of Scotland is affected by it. It is intended to dispose of nuclear waste created in the United Kingdom and, furthermore, in other countries. The nuclear waste from other countries would have to be transported through Scotland to a particular site for processing. If Dounreay were to be selected as the processing site, the A9—the main arterial route that runs from north to south in Scotland—would become the irradiated spine of our nation.
The debate therefore affects all the people of Scotland. I am wearing a badge that was produced by Highland regional council, which is currently spearheading the campaign against Nirex's plans to come to Dounreay. Highland regional council says that it wants a nationwide campaign to be organised against the disposal of nuclear waste in Scotland.
This is a key issue for Scotland. Earlier today, I met the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) outside this building. He referred to the badge that I am wearing and suggested that we want to close down all nuclear plants in Scotland. I had to point out to him that the words on the badge produced by Highland regional council are "Bury Nuclear Waste." Everyone accepts that there is a responsibility to dispose of the nuclear waste that is created in our country, but there is a consensus—it is

certainly the view of my party—that it should be stored on site, above ground, where it can be carefully monitored and is accessible for regular checking.

Mr. Bill Walker: I am astonished by the hon. Lady's remarks. She follows the speech of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), who, if I understood him correctly, said that he did not want the waste from his constituency's nuclear station to be stored on site. He said that it should go to Sellafield. That is the opposite of what the hon. Lady wants.

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Mrs. Ewing: Thankfully, I am not responsible for the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson). I must stress that, in the campaign against a Nirex site at Dounreay, it should not be regarded as a victory if nuclear waste is buried at Sellafield. The burying of nuclear waste is the greatest danger we face, because no one can predict seismic or underwater movements. The waste will need to be monitored for centuries, and that is why it must be stored on site and above ground.
There is an international aspect to the issue, and the disposal of nuclear waste should be dealt with internationally. It is such a major issue that one country cannot come to grips with the problem. We should consider with other countries more effective ways of disposing of nuclear waste.
Safety is critical. Highland regional council was at pains yesterday to stress that Nirex has said that it cannot put the case for safety in time for any public inquiry. In The Independent on 21 January, Ron Flowers—a director of UK Nirex—referred to the nuclear waste disposal company and a possible public inquiry. The article said that Nirex would
present a preliminary safety case to the inquiry but detailed geological research will have to continue—possibly for as long as a decade after the inquiry ends—before the safety case is finished … Dr. Flowers believes that at the planning inquiry, the regulatory bodies—the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and HM Inspectorate of Pollution—will give provisional views of the ultimate acceptability of the repository, provisional views of what they expect to say by the year 2000, when the repository is expected to open.
When the residents of Caithness and the people of Scotland are being asked to accept that the disposal of nuclear waste will be safe, it is ridiculous that there cannot be a ruling on safety until the repository is open.
The Daily Telegraph in March stated:
The failure of British Nuclear Fuels to have a full safety assessment of a £2·7 billion national nuclear waste dump ready in time for a public inquiry has been attacked by the Government's most senior adviser on the industry.
There is report after report showing that neither Nirex nor the Government can produce correct safety arguments to persuade the people of Scotland that they should accept the plans for the disposal of nuclear waste. I fully understand the reservations of the communities involved. Referendums and public opinion polls have all shown an overwhelming opposition to the idea of Nirex taking our country into its greedy hands.
I wish to stress the implications for industry. Much reference has been made to the perception of a clean environment and its importance for Scottish industries. The best references that I can cite are those from people involved in the industries of Scotland. Highland regional council produced a document following its conference on 28 November 1990. Several hon. Members attended the


conference but, as happened yesterday, no one from the Government attended, even though they had received invitations. Other hon. Members representing industries in their constituencies managed to attend.

Sir Hector Monro: The hon. Lady should put her criticism in context. The invitation gave only two days' notice. Many hon. Members already had fixed commitments on Scottish matters at 4, 5 and 6 o'clock on that day, so it was not possible to attend at such short notice.

Mrs. Ewing: All hon. Members have difficulty in meeting many of our obligations, but some did manage to attend the conference at short notice. Given the circumstances, it was possible for someone from the Government at least to turn up and listen to the arguments of duly elected representatives of the community.
At the conference, Mrs. Julie Crowe of the Caithness National Farmers Union made a lengthy speech about the importance of agriculture to her area. One short quote will suffice to give a taste of what she said:
The whole world is now striving to produce the environmentally safe food so we have to compete. However, with a dump in Caithness I would suggest the playing field will not be level for us. The presence of a nuclear repository—dump—and the transport of nuclear waste through the area will blight local produce. This will mean we have a problem marketing our produce.
In referring to the fishing industry, Mr. Douglas MacLeod of the Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers said:
The clean waters of the Highlands were a priceless asset to shellfish growers and it would be a major disaster for the industry if Nirex was successful in identifying Dounreay as the site for the establishment of a repository. There was no apparent means of ultimately preventing leakage of radiation into the marine environment and accordingly the future of the shellfish industry and its employment prospects rested with the success of the campaign of opposition to Nirex.
Mr. Jamie Stone of Highland Fine Cheeses said:
The existence of a nuclear waste repository in the Highlands would have a detrimental effect on the clean image of the area which was a vital element in the marketing of specialty food products and whisky from the Highlands and also in the tourist industry. The Highlands were widely acclaimed for being one of the cleanest areas in Europe at the moment and this situation should not be threatened by Nirex.
Mr. J. P. MacDonald, the manager of Dalmore Distillery in Alness said:
As you are probably aware, being a distiller one is constantly monitoring the quality of the distillery water supply for any contamination, be it oil, diesel, sewage or whatever. Should a disaster happen during the transportation of radioactive nuclear waste across our water supply, either by road or rail, the consequences to us would be horrific. Our water supply is of prime importance and is guarded, if you like, jealously.
I could give many other quotations. I recommend the Minister to read the report and to take account of the views of those who provide jobs in the north of Scotland—vital jobs in my constituency. They are desperately worried that the perception of an unclean environment will prevent them from competing in the world market. More than 40 distilleries operate in my constituency, and just one unscrupulous Japanese whisky producer spreading a rumour throughout the world that Scottish whisky may be contaminated would result in the bottom falling out of the market. Where would the Chancellor of the Exchequer be if he no longer had revenue from the Scottish whisky industry?
The statements at the conference were made not by scaremongers but by people anxious to maintain the industries in their communities. They are trying to ensure that there is a future for young people in the rural communities of Scotland. I do not know what the politics may be of any of those people, and I do not really care: they work in the highlands of Scotland and are deeply concerned and angry about the Government's attitude.
The hon. Member for Tayside, North is twitching. I wish to quote no less a person than the Secretary of State for Scotland. I am sorry that he is not here to listen to the debate. In 1980, consideration was given to using Mullwharchar, in the Galloway hills, as a disposal site. It appears that there are double standards at the Scottish Office.
It is important to put on record exactly what the then hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang), a Back-Bench Member, said during the inquiry. On 3 March 1980, the 10th sitting day of the inquiry, the then hon. Gentleman said:
The terms and nature of this inquiry are inadequate and risk bringing our democratic processes into disrepute. The drilling itself would be a 'serious case of planning blight', and would affect tourism, agriculture and the locals' peace of mind.
He claimed that public opinion in Galloway was
strongly against the proposed geological research programme.
On 16 November 1980, The Scotsman reported the then hon. Gentleman as saying:
the lingering threat of the dumping of nuclear waste casts a dark shadow over all his constituents. 'They are concerned with the long term threat to future generations who would have to live in an environment ravaged by the irretrievable lodging in their midst of poisonous waste matter of inestimable danger.' 
Those were the words of the man who is now the Secretary of State for Scotland. I hope that he will recall his words and ponder them carefully. Having done so, perhaps he will reverse the governor-general attitude that was displayed by his predecessor. For example, the structure plan for Highland regional council and reports of planning inquiries were overturned with a few strokes of a red pen in St. Andrew's house. If there is genuine democracy—I hope that the Minister will convey my remarks to the Secretary of State—what is good enough for Galloway is good enough for the rest of the people of Scotland.
We are supposed to live in a democratic society. Those who have been consulted have overwhelmingly stated their opposition to the siting of a deep waste depository in Scotland. They have made their opposition crystal clear on every possible occasion. I hope that the Minister will say clearly that he is prepared for once to listen to democratic opinion. We are not prepared to sit back any longer while the people of our communities are the victims of autocratic treatment as the Government ride roughshod over them. We want public opinion to be taken into account. Jobs should be protected. Future generations should be able to feel that they have a future in our country instead of being forced to emigrate.
I feel passionately about these matters, because I know how the people in my constituency feel about them. Everyone in Moray—fishermen, farmers, distillers and everyone else—presents the same case as that which I am advancing this afternoon. The Government have not advanced logical arguments. They are unable to advance arguments that will persuade my constituents to think


otherwise. In a recent visit to Buckie in my constituency, SAND—Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping—with its specially designed nuclear dustbin, found that everyone in the area was willing to sign the petition that it had prepared.
Will that petition and others mean anything if the Scottish Office will not listen and will not take account of the genuine views of the people of our country? It is no wonder that the Tories were left with only 10 seats in Scotland after the 1987 general election. I suspect that they will have even fewer seats after the next general election. There will be Scottish National party gains in constituencies such as Tayside, North, where people feel as strongly about these matters as those elsewhere.
The Conservative party appears to have double standards when it is in power. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) referred to what took place in 1987—shortly before the general election—when four Conservative Members were not prepared to accept low-level waste disposal in their constituencies. When the Secretary of State, who was then the Back-Bench Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, argued his case during the Mullwharchar inquiry, it was accepted. When the people of Scotland speak with a democratic and united voice against something they do not want and about which they have strong feelings, why cannot it be accepted?

Mr. Bill Walker: The new clause is important because it touches on a controversial matter that should be discussed objectively, rationally and sanely. I agree with the comments of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson): this matter is much too serious to be treated flippantly or to be presented in a manner that distorts the truth.
We have just listened to the most appalling speech that I have heard for a long time, on nuclear dumping. One of the difficulties that we face in Scotland is misinformation, which is disseminated by certain politicians and political parties. I am reminded of a leaflet about nuclear dumping that was distributed in my constituency during the 1987 general election. It was full of lies. It suggested that the Government had decided that there should be nuclear dumping in the Schiehallion area, which is an area of special scientific interest in my constituency. It stated that the source of the information was a well-known Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Post. It failed to explain that the story that was being referred to in the Sunday Post was the result of a press release of the prospective parliamentary candidate of the Scottish National party for Western Isles. He issued the press release a few days before the general election, and it was reported upon in the Sunday Post on the following Sunday.
The report alluded to the source, but the leaflet referred to no source. It was not stated that the Scottish National party was presenting an SNP story—a lie. It did not claim that the source was the Sunday Post. I believe that the wrong date of publication was a deliberate error and a means of ensuring that a check could not be made. That is the sort of nonsense that we have learnt to expect from the SNP. It involves itself in various controversies and then dresses up the issues, misrepresents them and tells downright, blatant lies to obtain political advantage. A

careful study of the speech of the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) will reveal examples of deliberately placed Goebbels-type misinformation.
Of course everyone in Scotland is concerned about keeping the environment safe. Those of us who have a special interest in the Scotch whisky industry—the hon. Member for Moray is not the only one—realise that it is vital that watercourses and the sources of barley and grain are uncontaminated. Those are essential ingredients in the manufacture of whisky. I must declare an interest, because I sponsored the Scotch Whisky Act 1988, which sets out minimum standards. I am also treasurer of the Scotch whisky parliamentary group.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Walker: I shall. Incidentally, the hon. Gentleman failed to visit the Marines before they went off.

Mr. Welsh: I contacted the Marines and said, "If you have just returned from Northern Ireland and you are going to Iraq, the last thing you will want is a Member of Parliament chatting you up."
The hon. Gentleman objects to the purported actions of others but acts similarly himself. If Tayside, North were targeted as a nuclear dump, would the hon. Gentleman adopt the same attitude as the Secretary of State for Scotland, or would he join his constituents in opposing the siting of the dump in the area? I invite the hon. Gentleman to have regard to the large mote in his own eye.
Before he talks about leaflets, for example, the hon. Gentleman should bear in mind that the Conservative party in my constituency issued a leaflet in Scottish National party colours. It contained no statement to tell the reader whence it had come. I suppose that it was an example of attack as a means of defence. The Lord Advocate was taken to his own courts and his election agent was defeated. Heavy expenses were incurred.

Mr. Walker: The hon. Gentleman puts a hypothetical question, and I could equally ask him such a question. My answer is clear. I hope that if, at any time in the future, anyone proposes any kind of nuclear disposal anywhere in Scotland, the matter will be debated fully, sensibly and clearly, just as the hon. Member for East Lothian suggested. That is the correct way to tackle a difficult and tricky problem.

Mr. Wilson: I do not want the debate to turn into a bickering match between the tiny Tayside tigers about leaflets that have nothing to do with it, but there is a serious question here. It is proposed that 15 trains with nuclear cargoes should pass through Perth, if not through the hon. Gentleman's constituency, every week. I am sure that his constituents would like to know whether he views that prospect with equanimity.

Mr. Walker: That is a realistic question. If an area north of my constituency were to be chosen for the disposal of nuclear waste, the hon. Gentleman would be astonished if I did not ask all the relevant, important and pertinent questions regarding safety and transport. The hon. Gentleman is probably aware that I hope later to raise the whole question of transport, including nuclear waste transport.

Mr. Alistaire Darling: I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) on


reminding us what the Secretary of State for Scotland said 10 years ago, when there was a realistic prospect of Nirex dumping nuclear waste in his constituency. However, she should not hold out too much hope that he will stand by those same concerns 10 years later. If she has followed what he has said about the poll tax, she will know that the Secretary of State is flexible about his firmly held views. I am sure that, when it comes to the dumping of nuclear waste in Caithness or anywhere else, the Secretary of State will take a quite different line.
Following Nirex's proposals is rather like swotting flies: every time one tries to hit it on one site, it lands on another site with similar proposals for the dumping of nuclear waste.
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), because, if the nuclear waste generated by the power station in his constituency is moved, it will go by rail through my constituency and the constituencies of other Edinburgh Members—but not, of course, that of the Under-Secretary of State.
I do not profess any particular expertise in the properties of nuclear waste. I prefer to approach the problem with common sense. It is daft to dump nuclear waste where it cannot be recovered when we do not know what will happen to it in the next 50 or 100 years, or even the next few thousand years. Once we put nuclear waste beyond recovery, if it is discovered in the distant future that it can cause untold damage, whether through leakage or in generating heat which might lead to the cracking of rocks and so on, it will be too late to do anything about it. Therefore, until we know what to do with the stuff it is eminently sensible that it should be kept in a place where we can keep an eye on what is happening to it. I wish that those who were responsible for developing nuclear energy and nuclear power had, within minutes of discovering what it could do, set about discovering what we should do with the end products of the industry.
All of us are rightly concerned about the damage that has been done to our environment by what I might call conventional energy sources. Many of us see the smoke belching from power stations such as Longannet, not far from Edinburgh. We wonder what it is doing to the ozone layer and the environment, and naturally we look to alternative sources of energy. The people who promote nuclear energy have always done so on the grounds that it does not cause that much damage, but I am not fully convinced about that, particularly as it is not known what happens to the end products of nuclear fusion. Until we know that, it is madness to go ahead with producing more and more waste which will have to be kept on site or moved across the country. It is certainly daft to dump it down a hole with all the attendant problems.
If nuclear waste is produced at Torness it will be transported along Edinburgh's suburban railway line system and possibly along part of the mainline system to Sellafield. Because I was so concerned about the matter, I arranged to visit. Torness, and last year I spent a day there with Scottish Nuclear, which now owns and operates the plant.
I often feel that the nuclear industry is its own worst enemy. It is excessively secretive. It has been at pains to deny things that were subsequently found to have been fact. For some reason, it seems to prefer to shroud its

business in secrecy, repelling any inquiries and treating those who ask questions with disdain and sometimes contempt.
When I went to Torness and spoke to some of those at Scottish Nuclear, I was pleased to find that they showed an openness with which I was not familiar when I spent some years as a member of the joint consultative committee when the Torness power station was being built. At that time, truth was often one of the first casualties when we were discussing the legitimate concerns of people living in the area, particularly on employment questions, of which my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian is well aware.
I went into the chambers at Torness where the nuclear products will be produced, and spent some time clambering across the cask where the nuclear material will he loaded. I am satisfied that Scottish Nuclear has done much to try to reduce the risks, but it can never be absolutely confident that there is no risk. Nuclear material could leak through the seals on top of the cask that will carry the spent material. That possibility could never be excluded, and Scottish Nuclear was candid about it.
I suggested that Scottish Nuclear should invite the community groups and the people living in Edinburgh and along the railway lines to see for themselves and should hold public meetings, as the previous chairman of the South of Scotland electricity board had said that he might be prepared to do. At the time, I thought that it responded positively, so I was dismayed to find yesterday that, when the Edinburgh Evening News made inquiries about such public meetings, there had been a complete about-turn and there were to be no such meetings. If people wanted to visit Torness, they could do so as part of the general public tours that are being organised.
I hope that the Minister will use his influence with the nuclear industry to encourage it to start being open with people, to discuss people's legitimate fears and to admit that there might be mistakes, leakages and some risk. People might then more easily believe what it has to say.
The present problem—Nirex is no exception—is that people have no confidence in the nuclear industry because of its track record. It is for the nuclear industry to put matters right and to show openness that hitherto it has not shown. If it does not, it cannot be surprised when people vehemently object to anything it proposes.
If nuclear material is taken by train to Sellafield, for some reason using the more elderly Edinburgh suburban line, there is a risk of derailment. I know from having travelled on passenger trains that have been run by British Rail on special occasions on that line that the trains have to travel extremely slowly. If trains have to travel the length of Scotland, there is the risk that they may be the subject of a terrorist attack or something of that sort.
Unless such matters are addressed, people are right to be concerned about the prospect of nuclear waste being transported around Scotland. That concern is not helped by the suggestion that, at the end of the day, some nuclear waste is to be dumped in a place from which it cannot be recovered, if not at Caithness then at some other point. There is no guarantee that Nirex or one of its successor bodies will not crop up somewhere else, if not in the north of Scotland then in the United Kingdom. People living in different parts of the United Kingdom cannot rely on a general election to save them, as happened to people living in four constituencies in England in 1987.
I conclude by asking the Minister to respond to a question asked by other hon. Members—what research has been carried out into the treatment and safety of nuclear waste? Has the nuclear industry any idea what might be done to make it less dangerous or to reduce the risks for people who come into contact with it? What urgency has been injected into such research?
For the time being, I am happy to agree that nuclear waste should be stored on site and not transported around the country. I am also happy for it to be put where it can be recovered and checked, but that is not a long-term solution. Unless we can deal with such problems, the nuclear industry will always have the same question mark over it.
5.30 pm
Lest I am thought to be concentrating overmuch on the nuclear industry—although that is clearly what the movers of the new clause had in mind—I should say that there is no doubt that, if the Government were to concentrate on additional research into other forms of energy generation, perhaps some of the problems with which we are dealing today would be solved. I accept that there are forms of nuclear waste which are not the direct by-products of the nuclear industry and that we must deal with them, but we must consider the fundamental question about nuclear waste.
All types of waste are being generated every day, yet it seems that the effort made to deal with the end product is minimal. Unless the Secretary of State can reassure us, the same questions and doubts will continue. In any event, I hope that he will support the new clause, because surely the dumping of nuclear waste must have some bearing on the heritage of Scotland. I hope that he can make some encouraging noises rather than merely read one of his interminable briefs supplied by the Scottish Office.

Sir Hector Monro: I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), because he has added a tone of moderation and constructive thought to the debate, which, to a great extent, had become an attack on the nuclear industry.
For 35 years, I have lived within two miles of a nuclear power station and brought up a family there. I have confidence in the safety of operation at Chapelcross, and I am sure that the same could be said for those at Hunterston and Torness. The standard of safety at our nuclear power station is exceptionally high, and rightly so. I am glad that, over the years, Chapelcross has passed the tests carried out by the nuclear inspectorate and will continue in production for about another 10 years or more.
I say in passing that there are over 500 employees at Chapelcross. If the advice of candidates fighting me at general election after general election—from the Labour party, the Scottish National party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens—had been taken, the power station would have shut down long ago with an immense loss of jobs. I have every confidence in the exceptionally high standards at Chapelcross, and in all the work put into maintaining that standard and the safety of everyone who lives in the surrounding district. That work is accepted by the neighbourhood, by those who work at Chapelcross and by all involved.
Nuclear fuel is moved from Chapelcross to and from Sellafield. It is transported by road, with extreme safety and caution, in vehicles of exceptional toughness which I do not think would cause a nuclear accident if they were involved in an incident. Road transportation could not be practical other than for the relatively short distance from Chapelcross to Sellafield, because the vehicles are large and move very slowly. The thought that they might travel longer distances on Scottish roads is a non-starter.
Doubts—or worse than doubts—have been expressed today about rail transport. All of us will remember the spectacular film on television which showed a train crashing at 100 mph into a nuclear transporter truck. The truck emerged unharmed, so it is fair to say that, with regard to rail transport, the nuclear industry has taken immense trouble—and rightly so—to ensure that its transportation vehicles are of the highest standard. It is wrong to imply that there will be a series of rail crashes in Scotland in which nuclear fallout could occur. Such scaremongering is unacceptable.
I agree that nuclear dumping is an emotional issue. The word "dumping" is not strictly correct, but it has now become standard. The thought of nuclear dumping anywhere in the United Kingdom, or anywhere in the world, brings an immediate reaction. I agreed with my right hon. Friend that there should not be dumping in Mullwharchar. That was 11 years ago. [Interruption.] Let me finish what I am saying. I still say what I said then. Eleven years ago, Nirex's knowledge about the disposal of nuclear waste was even less broad than it is now.

Mr. Home Robertson: Even less?

Sir Hector Monro: Yes, it had not gone into the issue in the depth that I should have liked. Its knowledge of vitreous disposal, storage under the sea or elsewhere, was then not as deep as it is now.
It is right to say—and I keep saying it—that we are rushing the issue. There are magnificent new facilities at Sellafield for reprocessing an enormous amount of nuclear fuel, so what are we hurrying to make a decision about? Dry storage was mentioned by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson). It is merely an insurance policy should Sellafield be unable to reprocess the fuel. In that case, the fuel would go into a dry store, which would be used as a waiting station until it could go to Sellafield for reprocessing.

Mr. Home Robertson: It is an insurance policy not merely in case the fuel cannot get to Sellafield but for Scottish Nuclear's business plans. The current debate might have more to do with the business plans of British Nuclear Fuels plc at Sellafield and of Scottish Nuclear Ltd. negotiating about the price of processing waste fuel. I am not sure that that is the most satisfactory basis on which to make such decisions.

Sir Hector Monro: We are getting into details, which shows the complexity of the operation of the Atomic Energy Authority, or of British Nuclear Fuels and Scottish Nuclear.
The problem at Chapelcross for the past 10 years has been that of selling the power because, geographically, Chapelcross is not where the power is required. That is why the long-term future of Chapelcross and of its possible successor plant, on which British Nuclear Fuels is carrying out a detailed survey, is so important.
We cannot sweep the issue under the carpet, but Nirex is accelerating the search for a solution which is perhaps not required while Sellafield can cope adequately. The new facilities at Sell afield where British Nuclear Fuels is dealing with reprocessing cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds. There are adequate facilities for storage, so I do not think that storage at Dounreay immediately or in the next couple of years, is as urgent as the nuclear industry is implying in Scotland.
I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say. Delay and further study a re the answers in the disposal of nuclear waste. We should not press on too fast when there may still be an alternative method of disposing of waste other than at Sellafield. From all my contact with the nuclear industry, I believe that that is some years ahead.

Mr. Wilson: I should like the hon. Gentleman to address himself to the specific question of Scottish Natural Heritage. He has experience of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland, so I should be genuinely interested to hear whether he thinks that it is a matter on which Scottish Natural Heritage should at least take a view and express it to the Secretary of State.

Sir Hector Monro: I must return to the narrow issue of the new clause, around which we have wandered a long way for the past couple of hours. However, the issue is important and it is rare that we get a chance to talk about the Scottish heritage on the Floor of the House.
If I remember rightly, the Nature Conservancy Council was asked about the marine aspect at Dounreay. It would be right for Scottish Natural Heritage to take a view. I am saying not so much that the new clause is necessary, but that it is impossible for me to think that we could go into the issue without the major statutory bodies such as the NCC. We are leaping a year ahead because Scottish Natural Heritage will not come into being for another 11 months. We must live with the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland and the Countryside Commission for Scotland until 1 April 1992. I cannot believe that, in his deliberations over this major issue, the Secretary of State would not consult those bodies to hear their view.
I am sure that my hon. Friend will say that it is very likely—I cannot imagine otherwise—that SNH will be consulted when it is in place. If there was ever an issue on which we must try to take everyone in Scotland together, the disposal of nuclear waste is it. My own feeling is that Sellafield will be able to manage for a long time. We are rather rushing an issue which we do not need to do at present.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I follow the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) in begging colleagues not to use the phrase "nuclear dump". We are talking about a repository that will be fully engineered, managed and monitored. Its design will take account of the results of extensive research into the behaviour of radioactive waste underground, including leaching and gas generation. That will be augmented by detailed studies into the behaviour of natural deposits of radioactive material over hundreds of thousands of years, which will enable the designers of the repository to plan the optimum method of containment.
Anyone who has been to Sellafield will have to concede—I note the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey), a member of

the Amalgamated Engineering Union, who may catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker—that, whatever his view on general nuclear issues, Sellafield is quite superb. Having visited it six times over the years, I think that it is one of the most impressive places to which I have been.
5.45 pm
I have a question for the Minister. I am an unashamed friend of the nuclear industry. I am an unashamed friend of the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Executive, of British Nuclear Fuels plc and of Trade Unions for Safety in the Nuclear Industry. Mr. Roger Morgan, officially on behalf of the AEU, and Mr. Eric Hammond have invited me to be one of the speakers at its conference in Edinburgh on 18 May. I say that simply to give myself the credentials for asking my question. Is it really necessary to stir up a gratuitous hornets' nest?
I have listened to the speeches of the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing). She obviously feels passionately about the issue and I do not doubt for a moment that, in this matter, she represents her constituents. I listened to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) and to my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson). Whatever I think, and my view of the nuclear industry is deeply different from theirs, I have to concede that they represent strong feelings—not only theirs, but those of many people.
During the 1987 election, I was asked all about my supposed views on the storage of nuclear waste in various parts of the West Lothian constituency, as it used to be. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), who told me how foolhardy I had been on the subject, will no doubt recollect, that.

Mr. Donald Dewar: indicated assent.

Mr. Dalyell: I see my hon. Friend nodding.
Is it necessary to stir up a hornets' nest when there is an easy way out of the problem? The easy way out is at least to wait until such time as the geological surveys in the Sellafield area have been completed. Christopher Harding, the chairman of BNFL, whom I contacted before the debate, said:
The selection of a repository site is not limited soley by geological consideration, although these are of major significance. For instance, a substantial proportion of Britain's radioactive waste is currently stored at Sellafield and, from a logistical point of view, this makes Sellafield an attractive option if the geology is acceptable.
The sooner we find out whether the geology is acceptable the better.
I recognise that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) has a very real point. Many people are concerned, whether I like it or not, about transport. I said to a Government Whip that I thought that the Secretary of State for Energy should be with us for this debate. Cannot we wait, before creating any more difficulties in the north or elsewhere, to find out what the answer is from Sellafield? I have met plenty of people at Sellafield who are content to live against or above the waste facility that is envisaged. Any visitor to the thermal oxide reprocessing plant project—I have visited it recently—and to the various engineering projects at Sellafield must be deeply impressed by the sheer expertise there, and rather proud of Britain having it. I suspect that we are the best in the world.

Mr. Home Robertson: I am interested to hear what my hon. Friend says about his recent experience of a visit to the THORP project at Sellafield. It is a purpose-built, specialist facility for handling, processing and storing nuclear material. Would not it be rather ridiculous if, when we have such a national facility in public ownership through BNFL, organisations, including Scottish Nuclear, went off at a tangent, failed to take advantage of that facility and started using a new, largely untried and perhaps rather suspect technology to store the material in dry stores at individual power stations?

Mr. Dalyell: I am very much against untried technology. I do not want to take up the time of the House, because we have a lot of business. I want simply to say that, for heaven's sake, we should look at the Sellafield option.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: The brevity of my contribution owes most to the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) has spoken in the debate and I agree with everything that she said. It is also due to the fact that time is moving on, there is a lot more business on the amendment paper, and I want to hear the Minister's reply. The issue arises from within the boundaries of Highland regional council and from the campaign—which I very much support—that the regional council has run against the Nirex proposal.
I agree with the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) about how one is constantly caught, and that is not merely true of the Nirex issue but about matters nuclear more generally. It is rather like the abortion debate. No matter how much persuasion is used, people have a gut instinct about where they stand on nuclear matters, and persuasion in the House or on any other public platform tends to go out of the window.
Let us compare the Nirex issue to the poll tax. Adherents of that former flagship called it the community charge, whereas those who were against it let it be known that it should be called the poll tax. Similarly, people who are against what Nirex has been instructed to get on with call it a nuclear dump whereas people who are more neutral—perhaps more scientifically accurate—or who are in favour of what Nirex is doing tend to talk about deep site nuclear repositories, which has a more neutral sound than the more emotive and more easily understood expression, a nuclear dump. Part of the problem is that people have gut reactions on the issue. While people follow details of both sides of the argument, once they form a conclusion there tends to be very little shifting of opinion.
The hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) and I attended the opening of the Highland regional council campaign in Inverness some time ago. She quoted a number of people who spoke there. The cross-section of business, cultural and tourist potential and opinion that they represent within the area speaks for itself. I pay her special credit because she quoted my constituents far more than I would ever have dared to do, with any degree of modesty, in a speech.
The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) spoke about the need for an informed debate, and I agree with him. However, those of us who have been dealing with the Nirex proposals, or the investigations that it has been carrying out in Highland region in the past four years, have found that Nirex would have nothing to do

with any opportunity extended to it to appear on a public platform and put its case. I was involved in a local referendum, which Lorraine Mann, a constituent of mine and a leading member of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, helped to organise, and I pay tribute to the work that she has done on this issue in the past few years. Once again, when ballot papers were sent out, Nirex was invited to enclose information material to put its side of the argument, but, as on every other occasion, Nirex would have nothing to do with it.
It is difficult to have the informed debate that the hon. Member for Tayside, North and many others want when the agency charged with carrying out the investigations will not put its case except within carefully controlled circumstances of its choosing—as opposed to public dissemination of the facts—often with personnel that it has invited. All too often, that makes for a frustratingly one-sided debate. I do not think that Nirex does itself much good by pursuing that line.
One must consider the backdrop to this issue—the natural heritage and its role within the highlands. Successive Governments, both Labour and Conservative, in the late 1950s and through to the 1960s, supported opening up the highlands to try to reverse historic depopulation. Successive Governments supported the establishment of the Corpach pulp mill, the Invergordon aluminium smelter and the Dounreay fast breeder reactor research site.
When the late Willie Ross opened the Second Reading debate on the Bill that formed the basis for the Highlands and Islands development board, he said that the highlander was "the man on every Scot's conscience." I suspect that that would no longer be the case, because the sort of problems that have visited themselves upon the highlands have affected in equal measure other parts of Scotland, whether in the steel or coal industries or elsewhere.
There was general public support for development in the highlands. However, in the past 10 years, the pulp mill and the aluminium smelter have gone; and, more recently, the fast breeder reactor research programme was run down.
Let us be clear about the Nirex proposals. Although I cannot claim any scientific qualification, I understand that any jobs that might accrue from the siting of a nuclear repository—with respect to the hon. Member for Linlithgow, I shall use the neutral term—will not require the same scientific qualifications that have been developed at Dounreay in the preceding decades. Also, the numbers involved will not be nearly as encouraging as was perhaps first thought. However, that is not the crucial issue, which is that, as both my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute and the hon. Member for Moray made clear, given the essentially fragile nature of the highlands—their location and economic base—the public perception of products from that part of the country is all-important to ensure success in the national, European and international markets.
As successive chairmen of the HIDB and anyone else who has tried to promote the economy of the highlands will confirm, if added value is the name of the game and is the only viable means of securing an economic base for the highlands, something that is liable to run directly against the indigenous interests of added value in any form—whether fishing, farming, tourism or any other activity—clearly has little economic rationale.
People say of matters nuclear, especially a nuclear dump, "Not in my backyard." We saw a graphic example of that before the last election. However, Highland regional council, with all-party support, has put a distinctly different case. We are not saying, "Not in our back yard." If nuclear material is produced in the region, whether Dounreay is the source or whether it is low-grade waste from Raigmore hospital as a result of hospital processes, the council has been the first to say that we have a geographical and moral responsibility to take stock of it, to look after it and to secure it within Caithness, above ground level in dry storage, so that it is retrievable at a later date.
We are not saying that we will have nothing to do with it. We want to take responsibility for waste that accrues in our region. However, we are saying "Not in our back yard," to a nuclear dump and we are also saying that it should not be in anyone else's back yard either. It does not represent success if one moves the problem from one part of the country, that has perhaps been earmarked, to another.
I referred at the beginning of my speech to the fact that there are different views about the efficacy and desirability of civil nuclear power. I speak as one who sees a continuing need for a civil nuclear power programme in this country. I do not think that it is sage, in the long term, to put all one's energy eggs in one basket. A mixed provision of supply is only sensible for a country that is dependent on declining fossil fuels.
Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping is a good example of an interesting aspect of the Nirex proposals. Some people in that organisation oppose anything to do with the nuclear industry, whether a power station, a reprocessing plant or Nirex. Others may accept the need for civil nuclear power as a part of electricity generation, but do not want the Nirex proposals or may not be in favour of foreign reprocessing contracts being carried out in the United Kingdom.
However, there is a unanimity of view about Nirex. People may be in favour of a civil nuclear power programme of against it, but whatever their views on the rights and wrongs of that per se, everyone has agreed that Nirex is not a worthwhile object that they would wish to support. When people who would otherwise support civil nuclear power think that, it should cause the Scottish Office, the Department of Energy and the Department of the Environment to think again.
6 pm
Only last Friday, the Minister was in Dornie, a part of the highlands that he knows rather well, as he spends the occasional family holiday there. As he opened the new Dornie bridge bypass, he waxed lyrical about the natural beauty of the area. I know that he appreciates how crucial that perception is to the highlands as a whole, so I hope that he recognises the genuine and deeply felt acute anxiety in the highlands and elsewhere in the country about the damage which even talk about deep-site nuclear disposal could do. If he does, I hope that he will have a word with the Secretary of State and tell him not to ride roughshod over Highland regional council as the planning authority, as the Scottish Office has done so far.
He should also ask him to encourage sanity in other parts of Whitehall and of government and recognise that to lock away nuclear material so that it will not be retrievable in the future is madness. Even if we went for

on-site storage, we might discover in future the scientific knowledge to deal with the long half lives involved. We might be able to find a solution. If that is a scientific possibility, it would be crazy physically to block off future access to the material.
Not one hon. Member has spoken in support of what Nirex has been instructed to do. It is worth stressing that that is what has happened. The argument is always directed against Nirex, but it has been instructed as an agency to do something in the name of the Government. At the end of the day, it is a political decision. As we saw before the last general election, the Government are in a position to put an end to the hornets' nest, as it was rightly described, and the damaging uncertainty that has been created. I hope that, in his reply, the Minister can go a long way to calming the waters.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) raised a major issue. How can we register the feelings and anxieties of people and ensure that the worries of the people of Scotland who will have to live with these decisions are given democratic expression? Will Scottish Natural Heritage be able to fulfil that purpose? I have my doubts.
We have had a wide-ranging debate on one of the most important issues that will face Scotland for generations ahead. It has shown how inadequate a body is Scottish Natural Heritage to deal with the issue. The Minister said that SNH will be able to comment on such matters. That is not good enough. The Minister can comment. Anyone can comment—the Minister's granny can comment. But it is important that SNH should have the powers to make inquiries, be consulted and take action. Clearly, SNH does not have such powers now.
Any environmental agency worth its salt should have a major say and be able to take action on issues such as the dumping of either nuclear or toxic waste. It is incredible that SNH will not. Those are the most important issues which face our environment. The acid test is whether SNH, as planned by the Government, has the power to take action or even to be consulted. That shows how inadequate an instrument the Minister is creating.
I appreciate the Labour new clause, but I note that it uses the word "person" when it seeks to make nuclear dumping without SNH permission an offence. However, the greatest dumping threat does not come from individuals. It comes from an organisation—Nirex. Labour probably has in mind individuals such as landowners who may be only too happy to allow their land to be used for dumping. Perhaps that is why the new clause is phrased in that way. However, there is an obvious distinction between a legal persona and a Government Department. I do not care which one proposes nuclear dumping—it simply should not be allowed.
I hoped that the Scottish National party new clause would be selected. It would have strengthened the purpose of the Labour new clause. It is incredible that we do not have an adequate democratic forum in which to discuss these matters. We should be able to call representatives of Nirex and question them in detail about some of the anxieties raised in the House today. The obvious way of doing that would be through the Scottish Select Committee. Such a Committee could bring in Nirex, other organisations and expert witnesses and question them in detail. Such matters should be brought before the Scottish people——

Mr. Bill Walker: The Scottish National party refused to serve on the Committee.

Mr. Welsh: As usual, the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) appears to be jumping his guns. If anyone is to be blamed for the lack of a Scottish Select Committee, he is a prime candidate. It is a pity that we do not have a forum in which these matters could be discussed.
I regret that the much stronger SNP new clause was not selected. It refers to both nuclear dumping and the dumping of toxic waste. Scotland needs the protection of a cast-iron guaranteed halt to threats of nuclear dumping. Our new clause takes a much stronger stand against nuclear dumping. It includes protection against the transportation of nuclear waste. The lack of such protection is an unfortunate and serious weakness in the Labour new clause, which appears to be more of a probing new clause than one which Labour Members intend to press. I hope to find otherwise, and that the Labour party will press the new clause.
I also regret that there is no mention of toxic waste dumping in the Labour new clause. Dumping of toxic waste is not a greater threat than nuclear dumping but in many ways is a massive threat to the environment of Scotland. The acid test for the Minister is whether, with the powers proposed in the Bill, Scottish Natural Heritage, will be able to take a major part in making decisions on such issues. It should be a sounding board for the views of the people of Scotland.
No environmental protection organisation can fail to tackle or discuss nuclear and toxic waste dumping. The ramifications of such dumping spread across the whole social and economic fabric of Scotland. If Nirex or any other body uses Scotland as a nuclear dumping ground, it will be a disaster for the entire Scottish population who have to live with it, and for all visitors to the area. It will be a disaster for tourism, agriculture, fishing and other industries dependent on a good, clean environment and the worldwide understanding that Scotland has a wholesome environment.
We are discussing employment, as well as the primacy of safety. Nirex proposes to create only a few jobs, but the dump will result in a massive loss of jobs locally. On the basis of Nirex's own figures, the operational phase of the Dounreay installation would create only about 100 jobs. Yet in the fishing industry alone, 250 jobs would be lost if the industry lost only 1 per cent. of its capacity. If that is extended to other industries and activities in the highlands, we shall face a disaster in local employment.
The Bill is simply inadequate, for the reasons that I have given and other reasons given today. Unfortunately, inadequate as it is, it is probably the best that we are ever likely to get out of the Government. The issue of nuclear and toxic waste dumping shows how deficient the Bill is in meeting, the environmental needs of Scotland.
What is the Minister's personal position not only on the plans for Scottish Natural Heritage but on nuclear dumping? What standing does he have in the debate? We have already noted that the Secretary of State for Scotland was opposed to nuclear dumping in his constituency. His colleague the Secretary of State for Energy, who is responsible for Nirex, was opposed to nuclear dumping in his constituency. Both Ministers stopped the creation of such dumps in their constituencies. What firepower does the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon.

Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), have to offer in these circumstances? We have a right to know the Minister's position on the subject. Does he agree with his colleagues, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Energy—the man in charge of Nirex—in opposing dumping?
Will the Minister give a commitment to the people of Dounreay and of the whole of Scotland that he will ensure that they are not subjected to dumping plans for their area similar to those to which the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Energy were opposed? The timing is right. We are headed for a general election, as we were when the Secretary of State for Energy opposed nuclear dumping in his constituency. He succeeded because the Government feared a loss of votes.
Perhaps they do not have too many votes to lose up there, but what is the Minister's own personal position? Will he join his right hon. Friends in coming out and clearly opposing nuclear dumping in Scotland? If he does, I will certainly applaud him. Let us hear from the Minister what he says on this issue.

Mr. William McKelvey: I will be extremely brief on this matter, but I feel compelled to say something, since I have been unashamedly put in the frame by my unashamed hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who mentioned my own unashamed membership of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and I may have to say something unashamedly about its policy in the nuclear field.
As one who was from the beginning very much opposed to the whole concept of nuclear energy, my views have been somewhat tempered—not because of any direct pressure through my trade union but through a great deal of discussion throughout the trade union movement, especially on the whole aspect of safety. Irrespective of one's view of nuclear energy, I think we are all united on one thing: we are all extremely concerned about safety in that industry and will try our best to see that the safest methods are used for the production of nuclear energy. The AEU in particular taught me the lesson that we have a problem with the removal and storage of nuclear waste and how best to do it.
On many occasions, I have unashamedly been the ally of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Munro), who has unashamedly joined me in several campaigns—one, obviously, about the production and excellence of Scottish whisky of which he is the chairman. I can therefore understand why he wants to keep the water in Scotland as pure as possible. However, he said that there might have been a smack of hysteria in this debate. I honestly have not detected any hysteria. I welcome the debate because I think that it is extremely useful, and I believe that we shall have to go into this matter very much more fully in the near future.
One point that the hon. Gentleman made and on which I agree with him conceived haste. Why is there this undue haste? I went to Sellafield with my hon. friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) when we were invited to see for ourselves what they had done there about safety. I have to say, as someone who was apprehensive, to say the least, about that visit, that I was extremely interested in what I saw, and very impressed. The people there were trying to extend the range of what certainly seemed to me, as a layman, a centre of excellence as in the storage and handling of this dangerous matter.
Why, then, is it considered necessary to seek to impose this repository upon the people of the Highlands? There should be no imposition upon the people of the Highlands. We should not say that they must handle the storage because we happen to believe that the borings we have done show, that that is the best part of the country in which to store these wastes. If the people of the highlands say that they do not want it, that ought to be the end of the matter.
I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland will reflect on the words that he used 10 or 11 years ago, speaking quite eloquently, before an election. He fought his corner; he certainly did not wish waste to be dumped in his own backyard, as was going to happen then. No matter how we dress it up, although the safest repository in the world might well be in the highlands, if the people in the highlands do not want it there, that should be that.
The Secretary of State ought to learn the lessons of recent events. We did not want the poll tax in Scotland. It was foisted upon the people of Scotland, and we can now see the result of foisting it not only on us but on the people of the rest of the United Kingdom. We do not want opted out hospitals to be foisted on us, and we are having that rammed down our throats. We certainly did not want the examination of our seven-year-olds, and we are having that rammed down our throats. But the people of the highlands—they will be backed by the rest of the people of Scotland—will not have a repository for nuclear waste brought in from outside that area and stored in the highlands. We and the Secretary of State ought to learn that lesson: we cannot foist that upon the people of Scotland.
I saw the report that came up from the Highland region. Unfortunately I could not get to the meeting because I was at another meeting on Scottish business. I was impressed by the fact that the authors of the report said that they recognised that there was waste arising from production in their area and were prepared to take care of their own waste. They are not saying that the waste should be shoved into some other area. They have faced up admirably to their responsibilities.
We should recognise that the campaign is not hysterical but very responsible. The Secretary of State ought to recognise that, and he certainly ought to be in the lobby with us tonight supporting a genuine attempt to bring this matter fully in front of the people of Scotland and to legislate for it. We are giving the Secretary of State for Scotland the opportunity tonight to do so.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): When this debate began, the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) made it clear that this was a vehicle for a general debate as well as a debate on the specific terms of the new clause. May I first make it absolutely clear that Scottish National Heritage, under clause 2 as drafted, would be expected to advise the Secretary of State on any matter affecting the natural heritage of Scotland, and that would most certainly include the disposal and storage of radioactive material and waste.
The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North said most appropriately that a distinction should be drawn between nuclear power and nuclear waste, because it is within the knowledge of all of us that successive Governments have

supported nuclear power. In fact, it was the former Secretary of State, Bruce Millan, who gave approval for Torness to be built under the electric lighting Act. Therefore, we all—certainly the members of the major parties—have a moral obligation to make absolutely certain that nuclear waste is dealt with in the safest possible way and in a way that gives the greatest reassurance to the public.
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) and other hon. Members that there must be as much openness as possible on this subject. That is why, in the last Parliament, I sought to discuss on the Consolidated Fund with the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) the subject of nuclear power.
One point which I feel that I should answer concerns the planning implications. If Nirex were to decide that either Sellafield or Dounreay would be suitable as a repository for nuclear waste, planning permission would be required. The Government have made it clear that, if such an application were made, it would be called in for decision by the relevant Secretary of State and a full public local inquiry would be held. Scottish National Heritage, as the Secretary of State's adviser, would be asked for its views. Any proposals and objections that it might make would be fully considered at the inquiry. The planning framework is well established and capable of dealing with contentious cases. No special legislative provision is necessary.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) made a courageous speech. He made absolutely clear his support for the trade unionists who are most engaged in safety procedures. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) rightly suggested that the safest method possible should be used, and that I wholeheartedly support. I am sure that Nirex will take careful account of what the hon. Members have said.

Mr. Home Robertson: I thank the Minister for confirming that a planning application would be called in and would be covered by a full public inquiry. Can he confirm that similar planning arrangements would apply to the establishment of a dry store for nuclear fuel waste at Hunterston, Torness, and so on?

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Member takes me a stage further on. I can confirm that that subject is now under consideration. The hon. Member made a speech about spent fuel. Spent fuel which is not radioactive waste is currently sent to Sellafield for reprocessing. Dounreay is involved in reprocessing smaller quantitites of reactor fuel. Recently, however, Scottish Nuclear Ltd. put forward proposals to store spent fuel on site at Torness and Hunterston rather than send it to Sellafield. These proposals are currently under consideration. However, I shall be very happy to correspond further with the hon. Gentleman if he wants me to follow up any details in relation to spent fuel. If hon. Members wish, I can tell them how different forms of waste are dealt with.

Mr. Darling: Is the Minister saying that Scottish Nuclear has abandoned its plans to take spent fuel by rail, through Edinburgh, to Sellafield, and is considering keeping it on site? If that is what he is saying, it seems to be a departure from the position that the Government have taken up to now. The people of Edinburgh, as well as people elsewhere, will want to know.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I did not say that, but I shall make inquiries and write fully to the hon. Gentleman.
I was asked by the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North about the Secretary of State's decision on Nirex's application to drill 6,000 boreholes. Nirex appealed to the Secretary of State against the regional council's decision to refuse approval. The Secretary of State will announce shortly the decision and the outcome of the appeal.
I was asked about the views of NCCS and SNH. Obviously, it is for NCCS to express its own view; it is not for the Government to speak on its behalf.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) asked me about submarine hulks. No decision has yet been taken on the most appropriate means of disposing of out-of-service nuclear submarines. Currently, when a submarine has finished its active live, it is defueled, the radioactive material is removed for storage, and the submarine is beached at secure moorings. The disposal of the residual radioactive components of such submarines is now under active consideration.

Mr. Dalyell: This matter was raised nine years ago. It has been considered for a long time.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I shall certainly draw the hon. Gentleman's comments to the attention of the Secretary of State for Defence, who clearly is involved in these matters.
I was asked about expenditure on research into the long-term disposal of radioactive waste. In 1990–91 the Department of the Environment spent about £9 million on such research. Details are given in the annual report of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee. In 1990–91, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food also spent £3·5 million, and the industry itself spent about £27·5 million. The total of £40 million shows the seriousness with which this problem is rightly treated.
New clause 1 seeks to give to Scottish Natural Heritage new functions which, in our view, are inappopriate. The purpose of SNH is to combine the functions of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland and the Countryside Commission for Scotland—not to cross the work of the pollution control agencies. The hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) was a member of the Standing Committee that considered the Environmental Protection Bill in 1990. That legislation introduces tighter controls over possible sources of pollution, but uses the expertise of the existing regulatory authorities, which, with regard to nuclear substances, are the nuclear installations inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive and Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution.
Part I of the 1990 Act established a new system of control over the most potentially polluting processes that do not involve emissions of radioactivity. This will be administered by the industrial pollution inspectorate and the river purification authorities. Part II introduces tighter controls over the disposal of non-radioactive wastes. These will be exercised by the waste regulation authorities, overseen by the hazardous waste inspectorate of the Scottish Office. Part V of the 1990 Act strengthens the Radioactive Substances Act 1960, which is the statutory framework within which the industrial pollution inspectorate controls the keeping and use of radioactive material and the disposal of radioactive waste.
I do not recall that during the passage of that legislation the hon. Member for Angus, East expressed any dissatisfaction about this matter. It really is not good enough for him to suggest that it should be dealt with in the context of this Bill. Everybody knows that Scottish Natural Heritage is much more concerned with soft green issues. The Standing Committee of which the hon. Gentleman was a member dealt with hard green issues. He had every opportunity on that occasion to raise the matter if he was dissatisfied.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: Is the Minister saying that the new agency will have no say whatsoever if it is proposed that a nuclear dump be located at Dounreay? He says that SNH has the right to advise the Secretary of State, but has no legal right to be consulted or to take action. In refusing to rule out nuclear dumping in Caithness, is the Minister a Scottish Office NIMBY, like his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, or a Scottish Office namby?

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: New clause 1 seeks to give Scottish Natural Heritage statutory power in relation to any development of an underground repository for radioactive waste that may be proposed for Scotland. I am glad to see that the new clause leaves the final word with the Secretary of State. In effect, therefore, it merely requires the Secretary of State to consult Scottish Natural Heritage before allowing the development of any underground repository. For a very simple reason, that is unnecessary.
I am very happy to give an undertaking that, if there is any proposal to develop an underground repository, the Secretary of State will make certain that Scottish Natural Heritage is notified and given the opportunity to express its views. It will be free to express its views to my right hon. Friend directly, or at the local planning inquiry, to which we have already committed ourselves, if Nirex proposes that the United Kingdom's underground repository should be located at Dounreay. That commitment dates from 1984.
I want to refer to a point that is of particular importance and is relevant to a matter raised by the hon. Member for Linlithgow. Nirex has made it clear that, other factors being equal, Sellafield—not Dounreay—will be the preferred site because of transport considerations. It would simply be much cheaper to site the repository near Sellafield, where most of the waste arises. Of course, this gives rise to the question of transportation, about which I want to speak briefly, although it comes within the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.

Mr. Dalyell: Some of Nirex's friends, of whom I am one, are rather exasperated. Why should Opposition Members and their constituents be stirred up if the Government have more or less made up their minds—rightly, I believe—that Sellafield should be the location? I am told that the geological conditions there are very favourable. Why on earth should all this trouble be caused gratuitously? The Government's friends begged them not to take this course. They did it once in Ayrshire, and now they are doing it again.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Nirex will take careful note of what the hon. Gentleman has said, and will bear in mind the fact that he is a very strong supporter of nuclear power and of the most stringent safety conditions.
The question of transportation was raised—in particular, by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling).

Mr. Kennedy: Hon. Members have made the point that Nirex is not a free-standing agency, that it has a degree of accountability to Ministers. The Minister may draw the remarks of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) to the attention of Nirex, but can he explain what the Government were thinking of when they decided to drill in Caithness? By strong implication, we are now being told that Sellafield has been the preferred option all along, and is beginning to look as if it was the more likely option all along.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman must appreciate that, if various parts of Britain have nuclear power, the best and safest means of disposing of waste must be employed.
I have been asked what contact there has been between Secretaries of State and Nirex in the past. To answer that question, I shall have to check in great detail the minutes of all the appropriate meetings, and I shall be happy to do so.
The matter raised by the hon. Member for Linlithgow should be well within the knowledge of Nirex, which would be wise to take it fully into account.
The issue of the transportation of nuclear waste is really a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. This Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for discussion of the issue. However, I can say that the safety record in the transportation of nuclear material in this country is excellent. The safety regulations for the transporting of such material are based on stringent internationally agreed standards, laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This question has been considered several times in recent years—at the Dounreay, Sizewell and Hinkley public inquiries—and in no case did anyone produce evidence that cast doubt on the adequacy of the regulations.
In nearly 30 years of nuclear flask movements, not one incident has occurred that led to the release of even the smallest quantity of radioactivity. The transport of nuclear waste to a deep repository, wherever it is ultimately sited, would of course be considered in detail at the local planning inquiry to which we have committed ourselves.

Mr. John McFall: Nuclear submarines and reactors are extremely large objects to decommission. How feasible does the Minister think it would be to have such constructions taken to Dounreay? In other words, Dounreay seems to be ruled out from the start.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I am not putting forward any such proposal tonight. I can only tell the hon. Gentleman that the matter is under consideration. If he has a proposal to make, I strongly suggest that he sends it to the Secretary of State for Defence, with a copy to the Scottish Office.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow had my total agreement when he said that it was inappropriate to use the expression "nuclear dump". It is extraordinary to find

that phrase being used so much when most of the radioactive waste that is produced in Scotland is transported into England for disposal or reprocessing. It is perhaps a commentary on the extremes to which scaremongering has extended that some people believe blatant untruths. It should be borne in mind that 50 per cent. of Scotland's electricity is supplied by nuclear energy.
The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) spoke about reprocessing. There is an important distinction between reprocessing fuel from abroad—in which case the waste will eventually be returned to the country of origin—and the disposal of radioactive waste created in this country. Dounreay's reprocessing business, which has safely and successfully been carried out in the past, has nothing to do with Nirex's current geological investigations at Sellafield and Dounreay, which are to determine whether either would be a suitable site for a deep repository for United Kingdom waste.
To sum up, the new clause seeks to give SNH statutory power over the development of an underground repository for radioactive waste. In doing so, the new clause cuts across the existing statutory framework in the Radioactive Substances Act 1960. The Act contains adequate provisions for controlling the disposal of radioactive waste. The authorisation procedures for disposing of radioactive waste require consultation with appropriate bodies. I assure the House that SNH would be included in any such consultations.
I hope that, with those reassurances, Opposition Members will not think it necessary to press the clause to a Division.

Mr. Wilson: I said at the outset that I was pleased that we had managed to get this issue raised on the Floor of the House. At the end of the debate, I am even more pleased, for this has been a first-class debate, which has proved extremely useful. Remarkable about it is the fact that we have achieved great consensus on the issue, beyond the immediate subject under discussion, of whether a repository should be established at Dounreay.
I cannot say that this will prove to have been an influential debate, but it should be. The Official Report of it should be read in the proper circles, because the unanimity among the parties—hon. Members speaking from different standpoints but arriving at the same conclusion—is impressive. The consensus is clearly against the development at Dounreay. My hon. Friends and I are grateful to the Chair for allowing the debate to range wider than the immediate subject of the new clause.
There have been some key contributions to the debate. Much of what the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) said was common sense, although he said that there had been some hysterically anti-nuclear speeches from the Opposition Benches. A characteristic of the speeches of Opposition Members, certainly of Labour Members, has been the strong support for the civil nuclear industry.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) and I have major nuclear installations in our constituencies, as have my hon. Friends the Members for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey), whose views have been changed somewhat. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) recalled


visiting Chapelcross during the 1987 election and giving assurances that there was no threat to that station during its commercial lifetime.
In other words, the hon. Member for Dumfries must not lump all his past opponents together in the way he did. Any hon. Member who represents a constituency which includes an establishment such as Hunterston has his or her mind fully concentrated on the need for nuclear power and the contribution that it makes to the wider Scottish economy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow was right to ask whether it is necessary to stir up a hornets' nest over the issue. The Secretary of State has been told that he more than anyone should recognise the unnecessary storm that will be created if he allows the matter to proceed further. He must be aware of the way in which it could develop into an enormous issue. It is not in his interests, or in those of Scotland or the community most directly affected, to allow it to be at the centre of the brouhaha that would develop particularly if at the end of the day it turned out to be a false start, either because there was no interest in Dounreay or because it was discovered, after the expenditure of £500 million, that the place was not geologically suitable.
The Secretary of State has power quickly to bring the whole matter to an end. We were told by the Under-Secretary that he would be deciding soon on the 6,000 test bores. That could be the moment for him to make some virtue of the fact that he will uphold local democracy and say that the Dounreay option will not be pursued further. It is clear, on the basis of tonight's debate, that he would earn the gratitude of hon. Members in all parts of the House, and that would give the clearest possible message to Nirex.
The Under-Secretary said that Nirex would take careful note of what has been said in the debate and particularly of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. While Nirex may take careful note of our words, it would take even more careful note if it received a letter from the Secretary of State saying that he was not of a mind to overturn the democratically arrived at planning decision of Scottish National Heritage.
I welcome the comments of the Minister about the role of SNH and I hope that, on this and other issues with which the Bill is concerned, SNH will take heart from the fact that it seems to be the will of the Government that it should become involved in contentious matters in a wholehearted way. In other words, SNH does not exist simply to discuss the birds and the bees and peat cutting and the minutiae of nature conservation issues. It must get involved, from an environmental point of view, in the big issues of Scottish life and politics.
Having said that, I fear that I must tell the Minister that he did not go far enough, and that we feel it necessary to press the matter to a Division to reinforce the arguments that we have adduced.
I should have referred in my opening remarks to the fact that, when representatives of Highland regional council came to the House yesterday, they stressed strongly the commitment that Caithness had given to the nuclear industry. Caithness is also in the eye of the storm in conservation matters. Instead of proposals from Nirex to take up the slack in the Caithness economy, Highland

regional council would like the Government to say that the scientific research base for SNH will be centred in the place which is relevant to environmental concerns, which has a strong scientific background and which is facing great economic difficulties.
The convenor of Highland region, Duncan McPherson, wrote to the Secretary of State in those terms this week. He concluded his letter by hoping that the Secretary of State would support Highland regional council's desire to have the scientific research base, initially of the Nature Conservancy Council and subsequently of Scottish Natural Heritage, established in its area. What a constructive note we would end on if we could send that message to the people of Caithness and if we could tell them at the same time that the Secretary of State is turning down the application for 6,000 unwanted test bores.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The House divided: Ayes 93, Noes 132.

Division No. 128]
[6.39 pm


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Lestor, Joan (Eccles)


Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)
Livingstone, Ken


Allen, Graham
McAllion, John


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
McFall, John


Armstrong, Hilary
McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
McKelvey, William


Bellotti, David
McLeish, Henry


Bermingham, Gerald
McMaster, Gordon


Bray, Dr Jeremy
McWilliam, John


Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)
Madden, Max


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Meacher, Michael


Canavan, Dennis
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l &amp; Bute)


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Moonie, Dr Lewis


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Crowther, Stan
Mullin, Chris


Cryer, Bob
Nellist, Dave


Cummings, John
O'Brien, William


Dalyell, Tam
O'Hara, Edward


Darling, Alistair
O'Neill, Martin


Dewar, Donald
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Dixon, Don
Patchett, Terry


Dobson, Frank
Pike, Peter L.


Doran, Frank
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Prescott, John


Eastham, Ken
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Reid, Dr John


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Richardson, Jo


Fisher, Mark
Robertson, George


Foster, Derek
Ruddock, Joan


Fyfe, Maria
Salmond, Alex


Galbraith, Sam
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Galloway, George
Skinner, Dennis


George, Bruce
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


Golding, Mrs Llin
Smith, C. (Isl'ton &amp; F'bury)


Gordon, Mildred
Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Soley, Clive


Grocott, Bruce
Steel, Rt Hon Sir David


Home Robertson, John
Walley, Joan


Hood, Jimmy
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Howells, Geraint
Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)


Hoyle, Doug
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


Hughes, John (Coventry NE)
Wilson, Brian


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Winnick, David


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)



Ingram, Adam
Tellers for the Ayes:


Kennedy, Charles
Mr. Frank Haynes and


Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil
Mr. Thomas McAvoy.


Kirkwood, Archy





NOES


Amess, David
Arnold, Sir Thomas


Amos, Alan
Ashby, David


Arbuthnot, James
Aspinwall, Jack


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)






Bellingham, Henry
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Knowles, Michael


Benyon, W.
Lang, Rt Hon Ian


Blackburn, Dr John G.
Latham, Michael


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Lawrence, Ivan


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Boswell, Tim
Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)


Bottomley, Peter
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Bowis, John
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Brazier, Julian
MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)


Bright, Graham
Maclean, David


Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)
McLoughlin, Patrick


Browne, John (Winchester)
Malins, Humfrey


Budgen, Nicholas
Mans, Keith


Burt, Alistair
Mates, Michael


Butterfill, John
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Mills, Iain


Carrington, Matthew
Mitchell, Sir David


Carttiss, Michael
Monro, Sir Hector


Chapman, Sydney
Morrison, Sir Charles


Chope, Christopher
Moss, Malcolm


Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Plymouth)
Neale, Sir Gerrard


Clark, Rt Hon Sir William
Neubert, Sir Michael


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Newton, Rt Hon Tony


Cope, Rt Hon John
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Couchman, James
Norris, Steve


Cran, James
Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Oppenheim, Phillip


Dunn, Bob
Patnick, Irvine


Dykes, Hugh
Porter, Barry (Wirral S)


Evennett, David
Porter, David (Waveney)


Fallon, Michael
Powell, William (Corby)


Fishburn, John Dudley
Redwood, John


Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman
Rhodes James, Robert


Fox, Sir Marcus
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


French, Douglas
Rost, Peter


Gale, Roger
Ryder, Rt Hon Richard


Gardiner, Sir George
Sayeed, Jonathan


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Shaw, David (Dover)


Goodlad, Alastair
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)
Squire, Robin


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Gregory, Conal
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Stern, Michael


Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)
Stevens, Lewis


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Hannam, John
Sumberg, David


Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)
Summerson, Hugo


Harris, David
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Haselhurst, Alan
Thornton, Malcolm


Hawkins, Christopher
Thurnham, Peter


Hayward, Robert
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Hill, James
Twinn, Dr Ian


Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Warren, Kenneth


Hunter, Andrew
Widdecombe, Ann


Irvine, Michael
Wilshire, David


Jack, Michael
Yeo, Tim


Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey



Kilfedder, James
Tellers for the Noes:


King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)
Mr. Tom Sackville and


Kirkhope, Timothy
Mr. Timothy Wood.


Knapman, Roger

Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 4

SNH's POWERS IN RELATION TO PRIVATE ROADS

`(l) It shall be an offence for any person to construct a private road without first informing SNH of their intention to do so.

(2) Where SNH are of the opinion that the construction of a private road would result in serious damage to the natural heritage they shall serve notice of that fact on the person proposing the construction.

(3) Where such notice has been served, it shall be an offence to commence or to continue the construction of the road without the permission of the Secretary of State sought and obtained in writing.

(4) The Secretary of State shall not give such permission without first consulting SNH.

(5) Any person found guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

(6) For the purposes of this section "private road" means a road or track not maintained by a roads authority and constructed to bear vehicular traffic, whether or not it is a public right of way, and above a length to be specified by the Secretary of State.".—[Mr. Galbraith.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Sam Galbraith: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 4 deals with private tracks throughout Scotland and seeks to bring them under planning control.
Anyone who has tramped across the Scottish mountains or driven over them on local authority or other roads cannot help but be disturbed by the scars created on the landscape and to our natural heritage by those roads that clearly spread across the moorland and hills. Those tracks give access to a limited number of individuals but are offensive to a large number of people who see them. They are often unsightly because, being on private land, they come under no planning control.
The clause attempts to bring those roads within the authority of Scottish Natural Heritage. It is a problem that has been with us for many years and is growing rapidly. It has caused great concern to the Countryside Commission for Scotland. Indeed, its 22nd annual report in 1989 says:
The proliferation of unsightly hill tracks in remote and scenically beautiful areas continues to cause concern".
One of the worst cases mentioned by the Countryside Commission was the track bulldozed through Glen Feshie by Lord Dulverton, who owned that area. It was a particularly beautiful area which many of us, including the Minister—who often takes his holidays there in the winter—have often tramped. That beautiful glen has been scarred, probably irretrievably, by an unsightly track that was bulldozed through it without permission, despite the fact that the Countryside Commission recommended that Highland regional council continue to refuse planning permission and to seek reinstatement. That, however, has not been possible.
There was a further problem in 1986 when a track above 300 m, which is the limit imposed by the commission, was bulldozed through Glen Ey within the Deeside and Lochnagar national scenic area, again without planning permission. Another example is the hill track in Strath Dionard, which lies on the northern margin of the north-west Sutherland national scenic area. Unless action is taken to bring those tracks within planning controls, the problem can only worsen.
We are not attacking landowners, nor are we attempting to prevent tracks on private land within Scotland. Rather, we are trying to ensure that, if such tracks are necessary and a good case can be made for having them, they should at least be developed in a suitably scenic way as far as possible. Many of them lead to no significant place. For example, the track near Arduerike estate, which is three or four miles long, leads only to a small fishing loch. One finds when walking in that area that no one else uses the track. Therefore, those tracks


are bulldozed for use by a limited number of individuals, and for most of the year they lie vacant, only to assault the eyes of those who see them.
Another problem is the track at Beinn a'Bhuird, in a particularly nice area. It is badly designed and offensive to the eye. It could easily be dealt with, because it now lies within the Mar Lodge estate.
What is the Government's current position on Mar Lodge estate? Will they make funds available for that estate or will it pass into public ownership? Mar Lodge estate stretches from the woods of Dee, up over Corrie Etchican down Ben McDuie across to Cairn Toul, across to the nature reserve at Glen Feshie. It forms part of an extremely beautiful landscape of great natural heritage significance. It is currently owned privately, and it is said that it could be sold to the public for £10 million to £15 million—a small price to pay for such an exquisite piece of land. If Scotland's natural heritage is to be protected, surely Scottish Natural Heritage should purchase that land on behalf of the nation.
Today's Scotsman said:
Mar Lodge provides an opportunity for the state to protect and preserve an important part of Scotland's heritage, including three of Britain's highest mountains. Under the new agency it could become a model demonstrating how conservation, recreation and limited development could be practised without conflict. It is estimated that, at the most, such a venture would require £5 million from the Exchequer".
Are the Government prepared to give not only tacit but practical support to Scottish Natural Heritage and purchase Mar Lodge estate for the nation? Were such land in public hands, we could prevent the despoilment of those areas by unsightly tracks. Everyone, whether they tramp across the mountains or merely travel through them, is offended by those roads which, in increasing numbers, are pushed through estates. The amendment seeks to bring them under planning controls to ensure that, if they must exist, they are built in the most aesthetic manner.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Two issues have arisen from the debate: private roads and Mar Lodge.
The Prime target of this amendment is the unsightly mountain track, over which there has been some controversy in recent years. The Government agree that there has been a case for extending control over the way in which such developments take place. Since 1987, we have required all proposals for hill tracks in national scenic areas to be subject to planning permission. This requirement for planning permission, which provides for consultation with the countryside Commission for Scotland, and, ultimately, referral to the Secretary of State, will not only be transferred to Scottish Natural Heritage but would also carry forward to apply similarly in natural heritage areas.
We are currently considering whether there is a case for a further extension of this or a similar requirement throughout other parts of Scotland. We intend to seek comments on proposals later this year.
The amendment would create an offence for the construction of a private road without the sanction of SNH. We do not believe that the introduction of a new offence is conducive to the consensual approach we seek for the operation of Scottish Natural Heritage. More particularly, given the existing role of planning authorities, the Countryside Commission for Scotland and, ultimately,

the Secretary of State, and the possible extension of the procedures, the introduction of an offence for failing to consult SNH on every private road can scarcely be defined as administratively efficient.

Mr. Wilson: The Minister referred to the consensual approach, but some of the tracks are simply acts of vandalism. Other vandals are not treated in a consensual way, with people saying to them, "Would you mind not doing it?" They are rightly punished for acts of vandalism. Some of the tracks that have been made to pre-empt the controls suggest a level of irresponsibility on the part of those who make them. That irresponsibility will not be constrained by the consensual approach. Perhaps the Minister could give us a firmer proposal.

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Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: This is a matter of sufficient importance for me to state that we intend to consult on it, hopefully later this summer, when we shall put forward proposals and listen to various views.
The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) asked about Mar Lodge, which has been in the press a great deal in recent days. The Government recognise the national and international conservation status of the Cairngorms. We have already taken a number of decisions in recognition of their importance. For example, the Secretary of State modified the Highlands regional structure plan to guard against the development of downhill ski developments in Lurcher's gully to protect the gully, surrounding quarries and the adjacent mountain plateau. In that connection, the evidence relating to the road was of particular interest.
We have established a working party under the chairmanship of Magnus Magnusson to develop a management plan for the district, which will form the basis for its protection and sustainable use in the longer term. We also submitted a case for the world heritage listing of the Cairngorms to UNESCO. I am sure that the House will agree that those steps clearly underline our intentions to ensure proper management of the district.
We recognise the important position of the Mar Lodge estate within the Cairngorms. It comprises a range of habitats from the flood plain terraces of the Dee to the high plateau of Ben Macdui. It has significant remnants of the Caledonian Scots pine forest, as well as habitat for a wide range of important bird species. It is also enjoyed for recreational purposes and managed for sporting purposes. The question of who is to own and manage the estate in future cannot be resolved at present, but, as the House will appreciate, for most of Scotland, conservation and recreation management of land is secured through private ownership.
I can assure the House that the Government would be prepared to look at any proposition that might be put to us—although without commitment. I understand that a series of complex discussions are under way at present between a number of organisations. I am afraid that I am not in a position to provide the House with any more detailed information now. I hope that that answers the inquiry of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden.

Mr. Galbraith: In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), if I may say so, that was a rather vague statement about what is


happening at Mar Lodge. I had hoped that the Minister would come up with a more definite statement and that he might even say that the Government were seriously considering purchasing it for the nation. It is in order to discuss that now, because the Mar Lodge estate includes Beinn a' Bhuird, which contains one of the tracks that has probably caused most controversy and offence over the years.
I was not particularly grateful to the Minister for saying that it would not be administratively efficient to bring all private tracks within the planning procedure. In the immortal words of my hon. Friend the Member for Garscadden, if I may say so, that seems a weak excuse. Anyone who can administer complex schemes, and who attempts to administer the poll tax, will surely find bringing a few private roads under administrative control as nothing in comparison. However, I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he intends to consult and make proposals, which I shall await with great interest, later in the year. Therefore, with the permission of the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 6

SPECIAL POWER OF SNH TO SEEK HABITAT MANAGEMENT ORDERS

'( ) Where it appears to the SNH expedient to do so for the purpose of conserving the natural heritage of Scotland it may make an application to the Secretary of State for a Habitat Management Order for the purposes of carrying out essential nature conservation management; and the provisions of Schedule (Procedure in Connection with Habitat Management Orders) shall have effect as to the making, confirmation and coming into operation of orders under this section.

(2) An application for an order under this section may only be made in respect of land—

(a) which has been notified or meets the criteria for notification as a site of special scientific interest under section 28 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; and
(b) has been the subject of an offer of a management agreement with the owners, lessees or occupiers of such land in accordance with the provisions of section 15 of the Countryside Act 1968 (Areas of Special Scientific Interest) and an agreement cannot be concluded.

(3) The Secretary of State may authorise SNH (or any person or organisation which he considers appropriate) to enter the land for the purpose of carrying out any operation necessary to maintain or conserve the special interest of the land.

(4) Any operation authorised under subsection (3) shall be specified in the order applying this section to the land.

(5) SNH, or other person or organisation authorised by the Secretary of State under subsection (3), may give notice to the appropriate owners, lessees or occupiers of the land requiring him to pay the expenses of the operations carried out under the order.

(6) The persons notified under subsection (5) may within 28 days of the services of the notice represent to the Secretary of State that—

(a) the amount specified in the notice is unreasonable; or
(b) the recovery of that amount would cause him hardship,
and the Secretary of State shall determine to what extent the representations are justified.

(7) The Secretary of State shall give notice of his determination, the reasons for it and the amount recoverable—

(a) to the persons who made the representation. And

(b) to the authority which gave notice under subsection (5).

(8) Any expenses recoverable by virtue of this section shall be recoverable as a simple contract debt in any court of competent jurisdiction.'.—[Mr. Galbraith.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Galbraith: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): With this, it will be convenient to take amendment No. 1, a new schedule——

PROCEDURE IN CONNECTION WITH HABITAT MANAGEMENT ORDERS

Consultation

1. Before making an order, the Secretary of State shall consult with SNH and such persons as he may consider appropriate.

Giving of Notice

2. (1) Before making an order, the Secretary of State shall prepare'a draft of the order and give notice—

(a) stating that he proposes to make the order and the general effect of it; and
(b) specifying the time (not being less than 28 days from the date of the giving of the notice) within which, and the manner in which, representations or objections with respect to the draft order may be made.

(2) Subject to sub-paragraph (3), the notice to be given under sub-paragraph (1) shall be given—

(a) to persons who had received the offer of a management agreement from SNH relating to the operations contained in the order; and
(b) every other owner, lessee or occupier of the land to which the draft order relates.

Unopposed Orders

3. If no representations or objections are duly made to the persons notified, or if any so made are withdrawn, the Secretary of State may make the order with or without modifications.

4. (1) If any representation or objection duly made by persons notified is not withdrawn the Secretary of State shall, before making the order, afford any such person an opportunity of being heard by a person appointed by the Secretary of State for the purpose.

(2) On considering any representations or objections duly made and the report of the person appointed to hear representations or objections the Secretary of State may make the order with or without modifications.

Restrictions on power to make orders with modifications

5. (1) The Secretary of State shall not make an order with modifications so as—

(a) to affect land not affected by the draft order; or
(b)—to include operations not authorised in the draft order.

Notice of making of Orders

6. (1) As soon as practicable after an order is made, the Secretary of State shall give notice describing the general effect of the order as made and stating the date on which it took effect.

(2) A notice under sub-paragraph (1) shall be given to the persons notified of the draft order.

Proceedings for Questioning Validity of Orders

7. (1) If any owner, lessee or occupier of the land to which the order applies is aggrieved by an order which has taken effect and desires to question its validity on the ground that it is not within the powers of section (Special powers of SNH to seek habitat management orders) or that any of the requirements of this Schedule have not been complied with in relation to it, he may within 42 days from the date of the giving of the notice under paragraph 6 make an application to the Court under this paragraph.

(2) On any such application the Court may, if satisfied that the order is not within those powers or that the interests of the applicant have been substantially prejudiced by a failure to comply with those requirements make such declaration as seems to the Court to be appropriate.

(3) Except as provided by this paragraph, the validity of an order shall not be questioned in any legal proceedings whatever.

(4) In this paragraph "the Court" means the Court of Session.'.

Mr. Galbraith: The new clause and the new schedule are long and complex but deal with a fairly simple point. A major issue throughout the passage of the Bill, and one which was dealt with extensively in Committee, was sites of special scientific interest and in particular the designation and various appeal procedures involved. However, now we are taking the matter further and considering what happens once a site has been designated.
Some sites of special scientific interest require maintenance or they deteriorate and lose their scientific interest. In its last report, the Nature Conservancy Council detailed such sites. In the year from 1 April 1989 to 31 March 1990, one site was lost—it suffered damage that resulted in the denotification of its SSSI status. In that year, three sites were partially lost—part of the site was denotified—and, in 35 of them, long-term damage occurred—there was a lasting reduction in the special scientific interest of those sites. Overall, 261 sites suffered damage from which they could recover. That shows the scale of the problem. Because SSSIs can deteriorate, some require positive management.
I do not know how many of those sites were in Scotland. The Minister may be able to get the answer to that question swiftly, so I shall talk for a few minutes if he wishes to obtain assistance. How many of the sites that were lost, partially lost or suffered long-term or short-term damage were in Scotland? Classic examples of SSSIs include the chalk downs and Wiltshire downs, where the SSSI sites lose their scientific value unless there is persistent sheep grazing. If the owner no longer wishes to graze sheep there, the area is overcome by scrub and its scientific value is lost.
The new clause would allow Scottish Natural Heritage to restore the designation of an SSSI that is in danger of losing its designation either through neglect or change of purpose of the land. There are two caveats to that. It can be used only on a designated area and where a land management agreement with the owner has been sought. If those two criteria are fulfilled, Scottish Natural Heritage can move in to preserve the sites.
I think that most of the examples are in England. I am not sure whether there are many in Scotland, although there has been a suggestion of one in the outer isles. The important principle set out in the new clause gives Scottish Natural Heritage a power to protect SSSIs that it would not otherwise have. It would be an important extension of the conservation principle in Scotland, and I hope that the Minister will look favourably on the new clause.

Mr. Dalyell: I have two questions of the Minister, and I gave him notice of one of them on Tuesday.
The Carver report strongly recommended that, in the new era, the future of nationally relevant databases and methodologies, such as the national vegetation classification and the biological record centre at Monkswood, should be assured. What steps is Scottish Natural Heritage taking, through the Joint Nature Conservancy Committee or otherwise, to ensure that the landscape and people of Scotland continue to benefit from that expertise? We are

not marketing such factors, and we should be holding them in trust. I gave the Scottish Office 48 hours notice so that it could give a considered answer.
Secondly, I think that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has been in touch with the Minister's Department this morning. It takes the view:
With regard to the Minister's statement that 'specified types of development' is not an adequate phrase to include in legislation, the RICS is not convinced that the phrase is sufficiently inadequate as to render the amendment undesirable. The alternative phrase 'such types of development as may be specified by the Secretary of State from time to time' may, however, meet with the approval of the Minister and the Parliamentary Draughtsman and the RICS would be happy to see its proposed amendment reworded accordingly.
At some stage—I think that this is the right one—I should like the Minister to comment on that point.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I welcome the opportunity to debate the role of sites of special scientific interest in habitat protection and the principle upon which the safeguarding of sites is based. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) has proposed a far-reaching step—in effect, to compel owners and occupiers to pay for the management of their land for nature conservation purposes, determined by the Secretary of State for Scotland in consultation with Scottish Natural Heritage.
While hearings and appeals to the courts are built into the procedures set out in the amendment, and objections to the costs in the new clause, it is difficult not to interpret these provisions as being peremptory to owners and occupiers. The House will appreciate that that flies in the face of our well-established procedures—based on the voluntary principle—for site safeguard. The whole basis of the voluntry approach to nature conservation management would be undermined if we not only told people how to manage their land in SSSIs but forced them to pay for that work.
The second reason for resisting the new clause and schedule is that the voluntary approach has stood the test of time in Scotland. Notification, allied with provision for the negotiation of management agreements and the procedure for making nature conservation orders, provides the opportunity for disagreements to be overcome. The fact that the last-resort powers of making nature conservation orders have been used so infrequently—in Scotland only 10 orders have been made when almost 1,300 SSSIs have been notified or renotified since 1981—provides ample proof of that point. In addition, the new procedures that the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland introduced early this month for SSSIs should bring about a considerable reduction in the number of disagreements.
We are not convinced that any benefits would accrue from the new powers. I believe that they have the potential so to undermine the present system that they would hinder rather than further the management of land within SSSIs in a way that is sensitive to nature conservation interests.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) for having given me notice that he would raise a matter in relation to the Carver report recommendations. I am aware that steps have been taken to secure the future of nationally relevant databases and methodologies, as he would wish. I can assure him, however, that the Carver report recommendations were fully implemented by the Environmental Protection Act 1990. All existing


databases, methodologies and research contracts have been inherited by one of the new conservation bodies of the Joint Nature Conservancy Committee, as appropriate.
Nothing has been lost in the process. The Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland has taken over data and contracts relevant to Scotland. These will, in turn, be transferred to Scottish Natural Heritage. Great Britain, United Kingdom and other international matters will be dealt with by the three new country agencies, acting through the Joint Nature Conservancy Committee.
Only a few days ago, I was at the headquarters of the Countryside Commission for Scotland, at Battleby. The offices there, which are being converted, will be of assistance to the JNCC staff in the future.
The hon. Gentleman also raised a point about clause 2, about which we had a useful discussion in Committee. I should emphasise that we are aware of the concern expressed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Scotland that development in designated areas should be of the highest standard. That is entirely proper. Our answer is that the RICS's concern is already taken account of as regards national scenic areas and SSSIs.
There are no areas designated under the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967 or the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Accordingly, there is no need for clause 2(2) to refer to those enactments. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman will be able to assure the institution that we are not trying to avoid the spirit of its proposals, since the essence of its concern has already been met. The present arrangements are satisfactory and will be carried forward to Scottish Natural Heritage when it comes into operation.

Mr. Galbraith: I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. He seems, however, to be slightly confused. He referred to the powers of last resort and nature conservation orders, but they are designed to deal with damaging activities on a site of special scientific interest. The new clause deals with the matter from the point of view of neglect. The question is not what a landowner may intend to do to a site but what he or she may fail to do. If a landowner were willing to enter into a land management agreement, it would cost him nothing. Therefore, the Minister's objections to the new clause are not well founded.
I accept his statement that the attempt to deal with these matters by agreement has worked reasonably well up to now. I should not like to interfere with that arrangement. However, this would be a reserve power, to be used in exceptional circumstances when a site of special scientific interest was endangered through neglect. In those circumstances, a land management agreement could be offered to the owner. If he refused the offer, only then would this reserve power come into effect.
Having heard the Minister's reassurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 7

ACCESS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

`( 1 ) No landowner or any other person or group of persons shall take any action which prohibits or impedes or reduces reasonable public access to the countryside without first reporting such proposed action to SNH.

(2) SNH shall consult appropriate local authorities and advertise any proposed action under subsection (1) of this section.

(3) If any objections are registered with SNH, then SNH shall arrange for a public inquiry to be held before deciding whether to approve or reject any proposed action under subsection (I) of this section.'.—[Mr. Canavan.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Dennis Canavan: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
During our debate on the Natural Heritage (Scotland) Bill it is appropriate that we should pay attention to public access to one of the most valuable parts of Scotland's natural heritage, the Scottish countryside. In terms of natural beauty, there are few, if any, countries which can equal Scotland. It is important to remember that the people of Scotland who, as a whole, have inherited that natural heritage have a duty to protect it, to ensure that it is used for the benefit of the people as a whole, and to pass it on to future generations for their enjoyment.
Unfortunately, the land—particularly the countryside—does not in law belong to the people as a whole. Huge countryside estates, including some of Scotland's most famous mountains, hills and glens, are owned by wealthy landlords such as the Duke of Buccleuch—with 277,000 acres—the Wills family—with 263,000 acres—Lord Seafield—with 185,000 acres—the Countess of Sutherland—with 158,000 acres—and the Duke of Westminster with 113,000 acres. It is worth remembering that it was people like the ancestors of the Sutherland family who were responsible for the Highland clearances. Some of the likes of them today are not content simply with owning huge tracts of land in Scotland; they seem to be intent on trying to keep the people of Scotland from enjoying access to that land. The House should try to do something about that. The enjoyment of the Scottish countryside should be the birthright of all the people of Scotland—and of people from further afield who come to Scotland to enjoy its natural beauty and its other assets.
I am not a lawyer, but, as I understand it, there is no common law of criminal trespass in Scotland and very little in the way of statute law and byelaws relating to criminal trespass. I hope that the Minister, who is a lawyer, will be able to say whether the law needs to be clarified and what improvements, if any, the Government have in mind, whatever the merits may be of my new clause.
My understanding is that, if someone is causing, or threatening to cause, damage to property, or is being a nuisance, a landowner can initiate civil action through the courts by reporting the matter to the sheriff court and seeking an interdict—although that could be granted only against a named person or persons. I should welcome clarification of that from the Minister, who is a well-known Scottish advocate.

Mr. Wilson: Is he?

Mr. Canavan: The Minister certainly was at one time.
It is my experience, and that of many who enjoy the countryside, that some landowners—not all—set a bad example by threatening walkers, climbers and innocent people even with violence. Those innocent people have no criminal intent; they want to enjoy a walk in the countryside or pursue a favourite sport or pastime.
I declare an interest as I regularly enjoy walking, hill running and climbing, most of which I do in the Scottish countryside. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for


Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), I cannot claim to have conquered all of Scotland's Munros. My hon. Friend is unique in the House—although I think that I might be the only hon. Member to have survived the Ben Nevis hill race on two occasions, and one has to be a bit of a masochist to enjoy that.
I wish to give a couple of examples of my experiences. One winter's day a few years ago, I, my brother and some friends arrived at daybreak in Glen Lyon to do some mountain climbing. My brother, who is more civilised and polite than me, courteously asked a chap in a tweed suit to tell us the best way to go up the mountain. The tweed suit gruffly replied, "You don't." It was difficult to argue with him because he had a gun and a big dog, and there were some other tweed-suited thugs lurking in the background. They told us in no uncertain terms to clear off because they were deer stalking. They made thinly veiled threats that, if we did not clear off, we risked being shot—I do not know whether by accident or design. I was so incensed by that attitude that I initially wanted to stand my ground. However, because of the undesirability of a by-election, my colleagues persuaded me that it would be better to climb another mountain.
I do not want to turn the debate into an argument about the morality or otherwise of certain blood sports, and whether they should even be taking place in the countryside. However, in all common sense there is a strong case for saying that there should be some regulation—preferably a statutory regulatory body—to decide whether certain activities should be given priority over other activities in certain areas at certain times. My new clause is a reasonable attempt to achieve that through the new Scottish Natural Heritage.
I shall give another example from my home area that shows the difficulties of gaining access to the countryside. Not long ago, I was doing a bit of cross-country running—a harmless enough pursuit. I was training for the London marathon, and my route took me through a country estate. I was accosted by the husband of the landowner, who shouted, "What the hell do you think you are doing?" I kept on running, and politely replied, "What does it look like? I'm running".
He drove ahead of me in his van and closed a gate to try to obstruct me. He virtually threatened me with violence if I went any further.
That man did not succeed in scaring me, but I know that other people in the area, and especially elderly people, have been intimidated by his behaviour. They are being deprived of access to the countryside so that they cannot even enjoy a walk. It is not even a walk with a dog; if it were, that man would probably argue that the dog might worry sheep if it were allowed off the leash. Groups of elderly people are too frightened to go walking through the countryside because they are being intimidated. That is unacceptable, and it is time that the House got to grips with the problem. Such thuggery by landowners cannot be allowed to continue.
I have quoted only two of my experiences; I could quote many more. Anyone who regularly enjoys countryside pursuits could cite many other instances of landowners using intimidatory and obstructive tactics, such as putting up barbed-wire fences and notices saying that trespassers will be prosecuted. Of course, in law the notices have no

validity. Nevertheless, through that intimidatory behaviour, landowners are hounding and harassing innocent people, with the result that many of them are terrified of going into the countryside and enjoying Scotland's natural assets.
My new clause would help to put a stop to that nonsense. The procedure that it outlines is simple. If a landowner had reasonable cause to limit or prohibit public access to an area of the countryside, he would first have to report his proposal to Scottish Natural Heritage. The agency would then consult the appropriate local authorities and advertise the proposal—something similar to a planning application—and people would have the right to register their objections. If there were such objections, Scottish Natural Heritage would arrange an appropriate public inquiry before deciding whether to approve or to reject the proposal. That is a straightforward and common-sense proposal.
My new clause is a reasonable, practical measure that would clarify Scottish law. It would improve access to the countryside and it could lead to a charter on the right of the people to access to an important part of Scotland's natural heritage. I ask the House to accept it.

Sir Hector Monro: I followed what the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) said with great interest. He was right about the vagueness of the law of trespass—indeed, there is none. The best statement that I could obtain was from the Scottish Landowners Federation, of which I am a member, although I do not speak on its behalf. It is that no one has the right to enter anyone else's property without consent except by means of an established public footpath or roadway, and that anyone who does so is strictly a trespasser. The term "trespass" is in common use, but it has not been defined in Scotland in statute or by the courts. The main difference between Scotland and England on trespass is that the common law of Scotland, unlike that of England, provides no penalty for the simple act of trespass itself. Damage or nuisance must first be proved. That shows that in Scotland there is no law of trespass. There is, however, the right of ownership.
7.30 pm
We must try to bring people together when it comes to using and enjoying the countryside to the best of everyone's advantage. That is the key approach. I was quite taken by the approach of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) in Committee, where he took a responsible attitude and rightly explained the wishes of so many people to use our wonderful countryside but said that, at the same time, they should not, as it were, overstep the mark or cause a nuisance to those carrying on farming. The achievement of that careful balance is the key factor.
So much depends upon attitudes. The hon. Member for Falkirk, West told us about his experience when running along a farm track. If he had stopped and asked the owner whether he would object if he, the hon. Gentleman, were to run along the track, I suspect that he would have been warmly welcomed to do so and told to enjoy his recreation. In many instances too much is taken for granted and not enough politeness is shown in using other people's property.
Those of us who frequently use the hills know that we must be careful about erosion and generally causing


damage to the landscape. The dangers become clear when we consider what has happened to Ben Lomond and the damage that has been caused in the Cairngorms. There are other concerns that turn upon farming operations, especially at lambing time. Other worries arise at nesting time, especially for many of the birds that we are keen to protect.
I once had to speak for an hour in Committee about bulls on public footpaths. I dare say that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) had to put up with my speech. I am not sure whether he listened to it with enthusiasm. There are many who can identify a bull, but not a heifer or a cow with a calf. They can be every bit as dangerous as a bull. People must be very careful when wandering about the hills if they are not aware of what they are doing.
When so much depends on the rural economy and on providing employment in the countryside, we should not attack, as the hon. Member for Falkirk, West did, those who are carrying out legitimate sporting operations. Those activities are important and we must not prevent them. It must be realised that at certain times—for example, from mid-August to late September—important shooting takes place on the hills. The greatest worry is that on which the hon. Gentleman touched, stalking.
We were highly critical in Committee—the same criticism has been made in the press—about the insufficient cull of deer in Scotland, and especially of hind. Stalking hind is an intricate and difficult operation, especially during the short days in Scotland in mid-winter. If hikers, hill climbers or hill walkers are on the hills at the same time, the operation becomes virtually impossible. A little co-operation either way would make a tremendous difference to everyone enjoying himself while cohabiting with our landscape.
I shall not talk about the concerns that are expressed about litter, gates, fences and knocking down dykes. It is all too easy to think that we can climb a dyke. If the top stone is knocked out, however, the whole thing begins to fall down almost immediately. There is also the danger of fire in forests and, because of other factors, the inconvenience that is caused to fishermen. There must be a balance between water sports and the enjoyment of those who are fishing.
When I was a Minister in the Department of the Environment and concerned with rural affairs, there was an immense amount of work to be done in protecting footpaths and bridleways. It is a relatively low key matter in Scotland. I am not sure whether district and regional councils have taken enough interest in establishing or retaining footpaths and producing maps so that people may know where there are rights of way. Similarly, I am not sure whether enough has been done to ensure that rights of way are available to enable the public to enjoy the countryside. We in Scotland are lagging behind in the development of footpaths and rights of way.
So much could be taught in schools about how to enjoy the countryside, what to look out for and how not to be difficult at times that matter, such as nesting time and during critical farming operations. The hon. Member for Falkirk, West takes a swipe at the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry whenever he can. No one has done more than the duke and the Buccleuch estates to educate children in Scotland to appreciate the joys of the countryside. The duke takes many school parties to his estates at Bowhill, Drumlanrig and in Northamptonshire so that they may learn how an estate is run. They visit the sawmill, the farm,

the gardens and the woodlands. The children leave with the feeling that they have begun to learn what enjoyment of the countryside is all about.
Anything that Scottish Natural Heritage can do to bring teachers and others to understand and to teach that appreciation in our schools, the better it will be. I know that it is said that the curriculum does not allow for such teaching, but if we cannot find time for things that matter, such as the countryside, much of our children's education will be lost.
It is extremely important to get right the balance of the use of the countryside. We must realise that everyone has an interest in achieving that. Only by working together in harmony will we all get the best out of the country.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: The major theme of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) was co-operation. That is clearly a reasonable goal when we talk about access to and use of the countryside. It is the traditional Scottish attitude to these matters. We believe that the land belongs to the people of Scotland and future generations of Scots. The land is merely held temporarily in trust by the present generation.
The Scottish attitude to our land and its enjoyment is that there should be freedom to roam, restricted only by the need to take care of the land and to be concerned about it. Passage should be allowed to those who give consideration to the needs of farmers and others who depend upon the land for their living. It is an alien experience when barriers are erected and rights of way are lost. The new clause seeks to clarify and consolidate the right of access of its people to the land of Scotland. I believe that it achieves the underlying purpose, within reasonable constraints, and will protect those who work on the land and gain a living by so doing.
The Scots have always taken a stroppy attitude to feudal landowners who try to get them off the hills. My only criticism of the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Canavan) is that he was not stroppy enough during the incidents which he described. There is no law of trespass worthy of the term in Scotland. A person's home and garden are fully protected from unwelcome visitors, and rightly so, but provided that people keep to the countryside code and cause no damage or disturbance to livestock, there should be no barriers to wandering over the mountains or generally enjoying our magnificent scenery.
Recent changes in ownership have led to certain changes in attitudes. Bit by bit, more and more estates are seeking to keep their lands for themselves and their friends. Many of the new estate owners come from the south of Britain, from the continent, the United States or the middle east, where the concept of public access to private property does not exist. There is a danger, because alien ideas are being introduced to Scotland by those who have no understanding of how the Scottish attitude to land has developed.
Those new attitudes have brought with them, from the Borders to the Highlands, a growing infestation of notice boards and signs preventing and restricting access. The undeniable fact that a landowner cannot prosecute for trespass and that public authorities have limited control over campers is ignored. It is unacceptable that rights of way should be blocked up, barbed wire laid down and fences put up restricting what are clearly rights of way and the ability of people to enjoy the land of Scotland.
Instead of the people of Scotland still imagining that their country is freely available to them, the opposite is becoming the case. Unless action is taken to reverse such trends, we will simply be herded into forestry parks or reservations of one kind or another, and that would be a great loss to Scotland. I certainly would not like to see the bulk of the Scottish people herded around and directed to specific areas, leaving our hills, lochs and mountain tops the private preserve of the fortunate and selfish few. If that ever happened, we would all be the losers and the Government would have made a big mistake. Therefore, I welcome the new clause, which reinforces the rights of the people of Scotland to their own land.
One step in the direction of mediation and a straightforward way in which to help the people of Scotland would be if the Government were to consider ordnance survey maps which, in England, but not in Scotland, include rights of way. That would be a straightforward way in which to inform people of their rights, reinforcing traditional rights of access and preventing some of the worst practices of landlords taking over rights of way for their own purposes. Marking such rights of way on ordnance survey maps would be a simple way of informing people of their rights.
The new clause clarifies the legal basis for access to Scotland's natural heritage. It establishes the principle that landowners should not exclude walkers from their land except where damage or intrusion into personal privacy might result. Therefore, I support the new clause and hope that the Government will accede to its basic premise that the land of Scotland belongs to the people of Scotland, and that their reasonable enjoyment of it should be allowed in harmony with other land users.

Mr. Dalyell: About three months ago, I telephoned Sir James Stormonth Darling, the ex-secretary of the National Trust for Scotland, who is well known to the Minister and to my hon. Friends, on a completely unrelated matter. As soon as we had discussed our business, he said that he did not know why I was asking about that, because I should really be concerned about Mar Lodge.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I have made a statement on that. I regret that the hon. Gentleman was not present.

Mr. Dalyell: I know, and very inadequate it was. If it had been a half-decent statement, the House would have been spared my speech, but it is precisely because it was such an inadequate statement that I make no apology, with the good will of my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith), for returning to the subject.
I spare the House my three months of interest in the subject, but this very day there has been a leader on it, not the one in the Scottish newspaper which has been quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden, but in a national paper. It is entitled "Preserving Mar Lodge", and it says:
The decision by the American billionaire Mr. John Kluge to sell the 77,000 acre Mar Lodge estate in the Cairngorms raises questions about the future of a mountain landscape which is to Britain's natural environment what St. Paul's Cathedral is to our man-made heritage.

Mr. Galbraith: Hear, hear.

Mr. Dalyell: I am glad to hear my hon. Friend say, "Hear, hear." If there is scepticism among Conservative Members, let me put their minds at rest. This is not some Labour tabloid or newspaper; it is The Daily Telegraph. The leader writer goes on:
The sale, which coincides with the formation of the Natural Heritage Agency for Scotland, also creates an opportunity which, if not taken, will be lost for generations. The disclosure that the Prince of Wales is involved in negotiations to buy the estate on behalf of the Crown-Estate and the fledging Scottish Natural Heritage Agency shows that he believes that the opportunity to buy the estate for the nation must be grasped.
The Prince of Wales should be wary of public ownership where other options exist. But the case of Mar Lodge is special.
I did not think that there was much special about it from the response that my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden received from the Minister. I am on the side of The Daily Telegraph and against the Minister on this.
The Daily Telegraph says:
But the case of Mar Lodge is special. It is so valuable that private ownership has meant foreign ownership for nearly 30 years. The rich men who have owned Mar Lodge have made mistakes—overstocking with deer and preventing one of the most magnificent fragments of Caledonian forests from regenerating, but they have kept it whole. The danger is now that a new buyer, anxious for a return on his investment, will split it up.
Many of us would say amen to that. I am one of those who is fortunate to know something of this wonderful countryside.
7.45 pm
The Daily Telegraph goes on:
No government has faced up to the challenge of how to reconcile the conflicts in the Cairngorms, Britain's most important mountain landscape. Now there is the chance to demonstrate how to conserve nature on a large scale, while achieving income from sporting interests and restricting access to those who are prepared to make the long walk in. All depends on Mr. Lang, the Scottish Secretary"—
or should we say, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton)
He should be clear on two things: that endorsing the purchase of Mar Lodge would banish doubt about the Government's commitment to nature conservation, and that it would prove enormously popular among the moderate opinion that the Conservative party badly needs to win back in Scotland.
It is not my business to suggest to the Conservative party how to win votes, but it is my business to say that there is a strong feeling that this is a major litmus test for Scottish Natural Heritage. The kind of statement that the Minister has made simply will not do for serious Scottish opinion.
I do not criticise the Secretary of State for having just come in, but I am referring his ministerial colleague to the leading article on Mar Lodge in The Daily Telegraph today, of which I plead with him to take notice.
I shall not abuse the time of the House, but I want to refer briefly to the statement made by Robert Edwards on 19 April:
Prince Charles was asked by Magnus Magnusson, chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council in Scotland, to approach the American billionaire, John Kluge, about the forthcoming sale of his 77,000-acre Mar Lodge estate which contains three of Britain's five highest mountains, rare flora and fauna. Kluge apparently refused to give the estate to the nation, but did agree to offer it to the Government or a consortium of voluntary organisations at the reduced price of £10 million, half of which could be paid over the next five years. It is expected to fetch over £13 million on the market.


Are those figures available to the Scottish Office?
The Minister will know what I am talking about i f I say, in parenthesis and without going into detail, that some individual properties have had millions—in the plural—of pounds from the national heritage memorial fund. We are not talking about something extraordinary but, dare I say, about less than the price of one Tornado. However, that is by the bye.
An article in The Guardian stated:
Kluge appears to have set a deadline, the first week of May. Magnusson, unable to convince the Scottish Secretary … to fight the Treasury for cash, this week appealed to conservation organisations for help with emergency funding.
There is nothing more urgent or important on the agenda
of the infant body than a decision about Mar Lodge. If that body acted on Mar Lodge, it could receive a great deal of good will, and if some of it accrued to the Conservative party, so be it.
I am not so inexperienced as to ask the Minister to get up to make a statement straight away, after what he said to my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith). However, I should like him to tell us tonight that, tomorrow and in the coming week Ministers, will discuss the issue, possibly with a view to revising their opinion. It would be a heck of a pity if the historic chance to do something of lasting importance for the countryside of Scotland were lost.

Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury): It is 107 years since James Bryce introduced the Access to Mountains Bill. For 107 years, the country has been waiting for a right for the people of this country to have access to the open countryside, which they should have the right to enjoy.
I hope that my colleagues will forgive an Englishman for participating in the debate, but I claim a long and abiding passion for the Scottish landscape and countryside. Over the years, I have spent many happy days roaming the hills, mountains and wilderness of Scotland. I am delighted to say that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) the shadow Chancellor, is now following in my footsteps and has embarked on the herculean task of completing the ascent of Scotland's 277 Munros.
Barring a number of historical incidents of some notoriety—most notably perhaps, the famous battle of Glen Tilt, when an eminent professor and his students were on a geological expedition in the late Victorian years and were set upon by a landowner and his ghillies—the tradition in the Scottish hills, which is a good tradition, has on the whole been one of consensus. There has been reasonable access for those who want to walk, climb and take recreation in the Scottish countryside and, in return for their responsibility, permission for that access has been granted by the landowners. That consensus has been based on good will and, on the whole, it has worked. It has not worked by walkers asking permission every time they wanted to walk on any footpath—as I suspect the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) intended—but it has been a tradition of responsibility on the one side and access granted on the other.
However, there are three problems that increasingly threaten the good practice of that tradition. First, the law does not always work well. Sadly, an increasing number of landowners deny access to reasonable members of the public who have no intention of causing damage to the landowners' property.
A few years ago, I was sitting on top of one of the hills just to the south of Lochnagar in an area of rolling countryside and great beauty. My brother and I had walked on three or four of the mountains in the area. We were at summit Cairn when we were approached by an irate landowner who—as in the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan)—carried a gun and was surrounded by a group of ghillies. He summarily ordered us off the mountain.
We were doing no damage; we were not disturbing any sporting interests and we were not disturbing any movement of deer. We were merely out for a walk. The special irony of the event was that we were sitting in a national nature reserve—the Caenlochan nature reserve. Despite that, the landowner was able to use his intimidatory powers to remove us from the land. When something of that type can happen, I contend that the law is not operating properly or fairly in the interests of all.
So the first problem is that the law does not always operate well. The second problem is that there is general confusion in the minds of many people who go into the Scottish hills about the exact state of the law. As the hon. Member for Dumfries stated, the law is somewhat unclear, because it does not prescribe a provision of trespass but it neverthless enables a landowner in some circumstances to remove a person from his land with the use of minimum force. An unclear law is not a good law. The new clause rightly seeks to clarify the law.
The third problem is precisely the provision for the use of minimum force. Where it is possible for a landowner to remove walkers from his or her land by intimidation—by hassling them, by threats or perhaps by revealing rather obviously the possession of a gun—there must always be a potential problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West wishes to put that right, and I support him. He is attempting not only to put the law into a clearer perspective but to move it closer to, for example, Swedish provisions for access, which work well. They are supported almost universally within Sweden; they preserve the right balance between the landowner's right of privacy and the general public's right of access, and enshrine those rights sensibly in legal form.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West will be successful in prevailing on the Government, although I doubt it. If we were able to enshrine such a provision in law for Scotland, I hope that it would give a lead for England and Wales. Therefore, I support the new clause.
The natural heritage of Scotland is unsurpassed. It is a landscape of breathtaking beauty. It has peaks, ridges, lochs and desolation in some of the wildest parts of our country, and they should be for all to enjoy and to share. It should not be up to anyone, however mighty, to remove that opportunity for enjoyment from the rest of us. My hon. Friend seeks to secure that enjoyment for us and for future generations. It is a noble cause, and I support him in it.

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Mr. Robert Maclennan: I understand and share the objectives of the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) who moved the new clause in his purpose of seeking to enlarge the freedom of the citizen to have access to Scottish rural areas. However, I am doubtful about the mechanisms that he has proposed


to achieve it. His proposal appears to put in the hands of a Government-appointed quango the decision whether a right of access should be enjoyed in a particular area.
That is a dangerous new power to give to a body such as Scottish Natural Heritage, and it could further restrict access in a way that would supplement and even empower proprietors to be more exclusive than some of them are at present. By simply prevailing on SNH that it had a good case to exclude the public, the proprietor would have the imprimatur of official approval which, at present, his ownership of itself may not give him. Far from achieving the purposes of Professor Bryce, to whom the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) so eloquently referred, I fear that the hon. Member for Falkirk, West could set back the very cause for which he so eloquently pleaded.
We should not be unduly hung up on the precise terms and proposals of the hon. Member for Falkirk, West, who identifies a serious and important issue. Many of us who represent parts of the country to which the public wish to have access in increasing numbers are conscious that there is a problem of reconciliation of interests which should be tackled and that the law, with all the obscurities to which the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) referred, may not resolve the difficulties which are increasingly sharp in certain areas.
Mention was made of the acquisition of estates by those who have shown less sensitivity to the custom and practice of those who have lived in the countryside than used to be the case. I do not, of course, exempt some of those who have lived in and known estates for a very long time from all blame for over-zealous exclusion of the public from their property.
This type of debate invites anecdotal evidence in support of whatever point of view one wishes to put. I do not want to go too far down the road of recalling the occasion in the Strath of Kildonan when the proprietor spoke, with accents of earlier years, pretty roughly to me when I was sitting by the roadside eating a sandwich, having just been re-elected as member of Parliament. She spoke roughly in terms of the possible damage that I would do to her property by sitting there and allowing the crumbs from my lunch to fertilise the moss around me. Her remarks may have been animated by a certain disappointment about the result of the election. On the whole, I have not found such an attitude among those who have lived and worked in the area, whether proprietors or others.
There are less attractive examples among the factors of estates. Factors often show the least sympathy for the public interest in access. They are rather at the sharp end of the conflict. There have been occasions when factors have deployed arguments that suggest that there is no time of year in some areas when it is suitable for the public to have access. They say that there is no time because it is either the time when people are stalking or shooting, or the time when the birdlife is breeding and the very scent of a human being could be enough to upset the eco-system over which the factors preside as the agents of the proprietor. Such an argument shows a certain lack of sympathy and understanding, and increases the desire to legislate where it is difficult to legislate without completely running into conflict over the use of land.
Certain uses of land are inconsistent with public access at certain times. It is not consistent with public access to stalk or to drive grouse across a moor. Many other forms of activity have some benefit for rural areas, but are inconsistent with public access at certain times. The limits to those times should be subject to some agreement and understanding. We may be reaching a time when the most constructive way forward would be to seek to agree for particular areas codes of practice with proprietors and representatives of the public who could, publicly and openly, express their view of the public interest in an area of land.
Like others, including the hon. Member for Falkirk, West, I do not wish to use the debate to run through the arguments about the appropriateness of blood sports. Field sports play a significant part, at least, in the highlands economy. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman or anyone else would wish to end such sports as a side wind of the proposal. That is not the purpose of the new clause.
However, we cannot rest absolutely content with the law and practice as they stand. In the past, the law has allowed gentlemen such as the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, whose hill-climbing endeavours fill less energetic Members with nothing but admiration, to reach those achievements broadly unimpeded, although with one or two unpleasant experiences such as that with which the hon. Gentleman regaled the House. He and others are right to point to the threat of change from the arrival of people who are less than sensitive to the growing public interest in access.
We cannot reconcile those interests by old-fashioned means and by old-fashioned proprietorial power, with sticks, dogs, guns and threatening notices that imply or threaten action against those who appear on the land.
I suggest to the Under-Secretary of State that he has an opportunity to emphasise the desirability of reconciling those interests and of reaching agreement on how they should be reconciled. That cannot be done Scotland-wide. The interests of heavily populated areas close to Glasgow, where the countryside is much more penetrated by people on weekend or even evening outings, are different from the interests of the more sparsely populated areas, further from population centres.
If codes of practice are the route to follow, they must be studied and negotiated for areas narrower than Scotland as a whole. However, the time has come to take a lead in this, perhaps with the Scottish Landowners Federation. The time has come to discuss their interests and the interests expressed by the Ramblers Association, organisations promoting tourism and others to seek to ensure that the coutryside in Scotland, which is part of our heritage and with which we are concerned in the Bill, remains attractive and as open as we would like it to be.

Mr. Bill Walker: I represent a constituency with huge agricultural and shooting interests and with a large tourist-related economy. I shall be brief, but I feel that it is important that anyone debating the measures contained in this clause should fully understand that we can have the economy that we have in Perthshire and in the part of Angus that I represent, with a balance in the use of land, only if people understand that balance. There have been some interesting, thoughtful and helpful speeches on that.
There are times when it is just not suitable for people to wander willy-nilly around parts of Perthshire and Angus.
They are a danger to themselves and to everyone else, and one must recognise that. There are other times when people are welcome, as they are in their hundreds of thousands in my constituency. They are certainly welcome on the slopes of Glen Shee, which has become increasingly popular, and I am delighted that it has had a good season this winter.
The jobs provided from all those different activities show that the balance is important. There would be no economy in my constituency if there were not a balance between the rural and tourist-related interests, which are the providers of jobs. When anyone says that they believe that they should have unlimited access to any part of my constituency, I tell them that that is unrealistic. I spend a lot of my time walking around the mountain areas of my constituency and, because they are so beautiful, I understand why they attract people.

Mr. Dalyell: I would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's views on the Mar Lodge estate issue, although I know that it is just outside his constituency.

Mr. Walker: I know the Mar Lodge estate quite well. Like the hon. Member for Linlithgow, I think that it is much too valuable an asset not to be available to the public at large, if that can be arranged, and I believe that it can. The hon. Gentleman will also know that in that part of Scotland there has been little difficulty in getting access. I used to live at the end of Glen Clova and I used to walk regularly over the top of the hills. There were never any problems. In those days, it was not unusual to bump into members of the royal family. They did not know me, but I knew who they were, so I had the advantage over them.
Let me make it clear that I was speaking largely to the interests of my own constituency and drawing the attention of the House to the importance of balancing rural interests with those of tourists and leisure and recreation activities. People who use the countryside extensively understand that balance. I find that the only people who give trouble are those who have an axe to grind for some reason or another. People who are interested in that balance and interested in the use of the countryside rarely have difficulty in being accommodating, either in their interests or their activities.

Mr. Galbraith: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) for moving the amendment, and to all those hon. Members who have spoken and have covered the ground fairly well, making it easy for me to be brief.
I cannot claim, as my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West can, to have run up and down Ben Nevis in the Ben Nevis hill race. I am not a masochist. Nor can I claim, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) can, to have climbed all the Munros. I am not a Munro bagger, with or without a beard, as Muriel Gray would have it.
I can claim to have spent the largest part of my life in the Scottish mountains—or at least most of the weekends of my life. I started initially with the Renfrewshire hills and moved on to the Scottish mountains, the Alps and then to the Himalayas. I shall repeat what I said in Committee, which the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro)

obviously noted. Throughout that time in the mountains and on the many trips that I have made to climb their rock and ice faces, I have never had any difficulty with access.
I do not have any experiences such as those that have been recounted by my hon. Friends. I have sometimes had to change my plans because of stalking or for other reasons, but that was always easily accommodated by a discussion with the keeper who would give me directions to go elsewhere. Perhaps I am fortunate, but that is my experience. That is due to the traditional nature of access to the Scottish mountains, from which we have all benefited.
The traditional right of access is best summed up by Lord Thurso, one of the ogre figures mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson). We do not often agree with the noble Lord, but I think that we should again quote what he has said about access to his land:
I'm perfectly content with the Scots law of trespass which is that you can walk across my land but you can't stop and use it …Everybody has a right of passage, but only the owner has a right of use. This approach suits me perfectly well. It works very well and always has done.
I accept that that is the way that access has traditionally worked. In my case and for many other people, and even for my hon. Friends, it has worked very well, apart from a few exceptions.
However, we must recognise that the position in the Scottish mountains is changing, for whatever reasons. It might be due to a change in landowners' use, although I am not necessarily sure that that is the case as there were always troublesome landlords in the past and some new ones may or may not be more troublesome. There is also the question of forestry land which has been sold to private owners, which will obviously affect access.
Whatever the reasons for a change in attitude, there is no doubt that it has changed. It came home to me only at the weekend. As many hon. Members will know, for obvious reasons, I have been away from the mountains for about three years. I was in Glen Coe once again at the weekend, at the Kingshouse, from where one can gain access to the Black Mount estate. When I passed by there I noticed the increased hassle factor, as we would describe it on the mountains. A road leads up towards Ben Alder from just beside the Kingshouse. It had always had open access, but now there is a closed gate and a rather large sign pointing out that it is private land and listing all sorts of stipulations. None of the signs has any legal basis, but if one is unclear about whether one can gain access and about one's rights there is no doubt that notices saying "Don't trespass" and "Private land" are intimidating. The hassle factor is increasingly occurring on Scottish land. Unless it is dealt with now, it will cause further disturbance as more and more people seek access to the Scottish mountains.
There is no doubt that more and more people are frequenting the mountains. In the early 1960s, if one went to the north side of Ben Nevis to do one of the climbs on an August bank holiday, one might have been the only person there. I remember one bank holiday when I was the only person on the face of Ben Nevis. I was climbing an observatory buttress.
Now, although not in the Lake District proportions where one has to queue, more and more people are seeking access to the mountains in Scotland. There is a climb known as Point Five. Aficionados among us will know


that that is a nice, high-standard, popular climb. It was climbed for the first time only in the 1960s, yet by the late 1960s to early 1970s, we had to start queuing at 3 o'clock in the morning to gain access to the mountain, almost as one does in the Alps.
The Countryside Commission for Scotland recently asked System Three to carry out a poll on access to the countryside. It was found that 61 per cent. of the people sampled—almost two thirds of the respondents—claimed that they walked in the countryside of Scotland. Almost two thirds of the population claim to climb or walk in the countryside of Scotland. That is the extent of the problem.
The recent Munro book by the Scottish Mountaineering Trust almost instantly sold 50,000 copies. We can extrapolate from that that between 10,000 and 15,000 trips are made to the mountains each year. Of the people who went into the mountains, 61 per cent. had difficulty knowing where they were going and what their rights of access were. Three quarters of the sample—almost 72 per cent.—agreed that people should have freer and better access to the mountains.
The survey showed how public opinion regards the problem. The problem must be set against the ever-increasing number of difficulties. I do not have any personal anecdotes of difficulty with access, but many examples are coming into the public domain. We have all heard about the troubles of the Kintail mountain rescue team. It wanted to produce a booklet on walks in the Kintail region in order to raise funds. The local landowner threatened to prevent the team from gaining access to his land, even for mountain rescue purposes.
In fairness to the Scottish Landowners Federation, it disowned the position taken by the landowner. It has always been reasonable and I commend it for that. It regards the traditional approach as the correct one. It wishes to negotiate access and achieve a balanced approach. It did not support its member in Kintail. The letters column of the West Highland Free Press contained a letter from one member who was threatened with prevention of access. That is a most excellent journal run by an extremely able individual, although I am not sure who he is. Sometimes I am not sure whether he knows who he is. The member said:
I have enjoyed hill walking for over 20 years and have always attempted to co-operate with the estates over stalking etc. Increasingly, however, I have had blanket refusals of access, even though there is no stalking in the immediate area.
There is a nice wee footnote at the bottom which says:
Donations to Kintail Mountain Rescue Team funds should be sent to Sergeant Charles Gillies, Police Station, Kyle of Lochalsh.
I read that out for the benefit of hon. Members.
That is one of the incidents which have arisen. A more recent one took place on Saturday 13 April 1991 on the lands of Lord Pearson of Rannoch.

Sir Hector Monro: Ah.

Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Member for Dumfries obviously knows Lord Pearson.

Sir Hector Monro: No.

Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Gentleman wishes to dissociate himself from Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I realise why. Lord Pearson was the famous individual of the sites of special scientific interest amendment in the Lords.
Four hill walkers were on open hill on Lord Pearson's land, 3 km from Rannoch station, when they were told to get off by two men wearing military garb. The men said that it was a shooting area and gave no other explanation. They said that the owner of the land was Lord Pearson.

Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that from time to time the military make use of that part of his Lordship's estate. It is possible that the men were in military garb, and properly entitled to be so.

Mr. Galbraith: As far as I know, the area is not under the control of the Ministry of Defence, so, whether shooting was going on there or not, the men had no right to ask others to remove themselves from the area or to do so on behalf of Lord Pearson.
I hope that the Minister will comment on another worrying development on access to the land. I hope that he will dissociate himself from it. Professor Sir Frederick Holliday, the chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, was reported in the Press and Journal on 22 January as saying that there should be
a system of tradeable permits for public access to the countryside, with prices set by the government or the landlords.
That is a most worrying development. Access to the countryside would be restricted and controlled by permits which would be sold.
Not unnaturally, the Ramblers Association was somewhat upset by that limitation of access to the land. It wrote to Professor Sir Frederick Holliday. He replied:
The report in the Press and Journal was only partly correct. I have long held the view that access to certain parts of the countryside will have to be restricted and paid for.
That was said by the chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. That is a Government body. Does the Minister agree with that? Will he take this opportunity to dissociate himself and his Government from that statement?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West for introducing the amendment. It deals with access to the countryside. I would like the traditional method to continue. I have had no problems with it in the past. However, there are increasing difficulties. We seek simply to provide a right of access to mountain areas—not to allow use or abuse of the mountain areas. We seek simply a right of access and clarification of the law. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on the new clause.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I agree with what the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan) said earlier. There is no common law of criminal trespass. The hon. Gentleman asked me for my legal opinion. He was also correct in saying that an interdict, which can be granted, can take effect only against a named person. Civil liability exists only for damage caused by trespass—for example, if someone took a dog into an area in calving or lambing season and upset the animals. Trampling of a cornfield could also be considered unreasonable.
My hon. Friend the member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) correctly stated the position in law. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) also gave a clear definition of the position. I am glad that


the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) spoke in the debate. We welcome hon. Members, who, although they represent other parts of Britain, greatly enjoy the countryside of Scotland. He said that the natural heritage of Scotland was unsurpassed and should be for all to enjoy. I am wholeheartedly in agreement with that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) stressed the importance of a balance in the use of land. That is absolutely correct. In Scotland, we have traditionally enjoyed the freedom to roam, derived from a mutual respect and understanding between those who own and manage the land and those who wish to use the land for recreation. In the eyes of the majority of commentators, this relationship has worked well and it is one that we are determined to see continue. We do not believe that the simple solution proposed by the new clause is the right solution. It not only ignores the many complex issues that surround access but introduces its own particular difficulties. For example, I do not envy the person asked to adjudicate, under the terms of subsection (1) whether the restriction or denial of access was reasonable.
Even if one gets over that hurdle, the new clause is unnecessary. Where Scottish Natural Heritage identifies a need for a particular track of land to be accessible, it will have a range of powers to negotiate means of securing that access. It will, under clause 12, be empowered to negotiate access agreements and, where appropriate, seek the Secretary of State's approval for an access order.
8.30 pm
Scottish National Heritage will also be able to negotiate management orders under section 49(a) of the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967, as amended by schedule 10 With those powers, the SNH will be able to negotiate the means to protect the national heritage where necessary. Those powers are more flexible than the specific legislative provision in the new clause and would allow for a clearer focusing of priorities as to where access is necessary.
I accept what has been said about more needing to be done. Indeed, it is for that reason that a thorough-going review is currently being carried out by the Countryside Commission for Scotland. The commission has been involved in opening up access among many waterways in Scotland. The Clyde Calders initiative is one near a centre of population, so a great many benefit from that, and that is a good use of public funds.
In carrying out this review, we are also involving the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, but it would be premature to take any action before the review is completed. There will, of course, be full consultation and decisions should not be made before that has been carried out. We welcome the initiative and look forward to an early report. We feel that at this stage it would be inadvisable to cut across the detailed consideration of the review by introducing a new legislative provision of this type, bearing in mind that access agreements can, and we very much hope will, be forthcoming.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) spoke about Mar Lodge. It is premature to make any decisions. Negotiations are under way concerning the purchase, and the means to finance the management, of the estate. Until they are concluded and the proposition is put to the Secretary of State, it would be unreasonable to expect the Government to make any commitment. The hon.

Gentleman will see in Hansard precisely what I said this evening in response to the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden.

Mr. Dalyell: rose——

Mr. Galbraith: rose——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Is the Minister giving way?

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Yes.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Mr. Dalyell.

Mr. Dalyell: It may be premature, but I think that what we can sensibly ask for tonight is that, before any irrevocable move is made, there will be at meeting of Ministers to discuss matters. Once the sale starts, without compensation and all sorts of legal entanglements, it will be a juggernaut that cannot be stopped. I am asking a straight question of the Secretary of State and the Minister. Can we be certain that, before any procedure starts, there will be a meeting of Ministers at which the excellent and powerful leader in The Daily Telegraph will be taken into account? It says:
Now there is the chance to demonstrate how to conserve nature on a large scale, while achieving income from sporting interests and restricting access to those who are prepared to make the long walk in. All depends on Mr. Lang, the Scottish Secretary.
Well, for his own house journal—no, I must not say that. If a distinguished newspaper such as The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that I respect very much, in a clever article, says that, surely it is time to step back and think.

Lord James Douglas Hamilton: rose——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I thought that the Minister was giving way.

Lord James Douglas Hamilton: I thought that I had finished, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will just say——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I asked the Minister if he was giving way and he indicated that he was.

Lord James Douglas Hamilton: I was not aware that I had given way but, if that is your ruling, I can respond in one sentence by saying that I will keep in touch with the situation but I cannot go further than that at present.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Let us be quite clear. Is the Minister giving way or is he not?

Lord James Douglas Hamilton: I think that I have finished now.

Madam Deputy Speaker: The Minister is not giving way. In that case, do I have another speaker? Mr. Galbraith.

Mr. Wilson: I will take over where my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) left off. I think that my hon. Friend wanted to point out to the Minister that he had not replied to the important question about the letter from the chairman of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Professor Sir Frederick Holliday. In it, the professor came up with the remarkable statement:
I have long held the view that access to certain parts of the countryside will have to be restricted and paid for.
I hope that the Minister will come in at the end of my brief remarks in order to respond.

Mr. Maclennan: Before the hon. Gentleman concludes his brief remarks, will he agree that the attitude expressed by Professor Holliday must make some of us pause before putting into the hands of SNH the power to determine whether public access should exist that is provided for in this clause. Although we understand and welcome the desire to increase public access, many of us do not think that this is the way to do it.

Mr. Wilson: The point is extremely well taken and I will come to it in a moment.
I do not want to delay the House at all but there is a wider perspective to the access question. What worries me about the debate is this. Everything that has been said by the Opposition parties is correct. There is always concern for the use of walkers and climbers and all the other people who go into the countryside for leisure purposes. The deprivation of access to the Scottish countryside and to huge areas of the natural terrain of Scotland has a much longer history than that. It affects communities that once lived and worked there and are now denied access in that broader sense.
What we are now down to in many areas is the margin of the debate. When there are people out with guns frightening off the odd individual that comes along, that is the last stage in the process. The major work of denying access was done by past generations, who got rid of the bulk of the people who lived and worked and had a right to be in that area.
I am conscious of the argument that this is all due to a new breed of landlord, people who do not understand the Scottish countryside, and so on. In the days of the old breed of landlord, Jock was as good as his master and everyone lived happily in a sort of Caledonian Valhalla. It is rubbish. These problems have been created by the old breed of landlord, the people who removed the vast bulk of the people from the land in the first place.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) referred to the Glen Tilt case. There we had a fine Scottish figure of a man—the Duke of Athol of that time—driving people off the land. He told the Cambridge students, "It is not a public way. It is my private drive. You shan't come down. The deer are coming. The deer are coming."
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow has been quoting from The Daily Telegraph editorials of 1991, but we can go back 100 years to the editorial in The Times based on that incident. The Times devoted a long leader to the incident in which it said:
The public have as perfect a right of way through the Vale of Glen Tilt as the Duke of Athol has to the possession of any acre of the property which constitutes his estate. The right in the one place, as the title in the other, is the mere creature of law.
The leader concluded as follows:
The two Cambridge students would have an easier remedy against the Duke of Athol if they cared to bestir themselves in the business. Certainly it would be rendering the public a service to bring this hotheaded foolish man to his senses.
I should be quite interested to know now whether the right of way in Glen Tilt—

Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that Glen Tilt is also in my constituency and there is no problem today getting into Glen Tilt, and I regularly picnic there with my family. In fact, there is only one

shepherd living there now. However, 20 or 30 men from Glen Tilt went to the Korean war. That gives some idea of the change that has taken place in that glen.

Mr. Wilson: I am delighted to hear that. If it is so, it is only because, over the generations, the right of access has been asserted on a regular basis.
The great causes celebres concerning access in the highlands and islands have not involved individual hill walkers. Consider the pet lamb case in Kintail, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) will know. It was absolutely crucial from the point of view of asserting the right of the people who lived there to put their stock on to estates. The pet lamb had wandered into a deer forest owned by a man called Winnis. He invoked the whole majesty of the law to deny the right to put even one lamb on the land. That case was not about individual access; it was about the right of a community to access to huge swathes of land that had been taken from it.
This is not some new phenomenon. Consider the last land raids in the highlands and islands, which took place after the second world war. The Nazi collaborator Lord Brockett was the owner of a large estate. The men coming home from the war, who had fought against the side that the noble Lord had supported, were denied the right to establish themselves in smallholdings. He, too, invoked the majesty of the law to remove them. At present, issues of access concern individuals, who might be told by some latter-day charlatan, "Get off. This is my land." The reason the conflict has been removed is that the mass of the people have been removed. That is the historic background.
I am interested in rights of access and in legislation on rights of access, but I am not concerned simply with the protection of hill walkers and mountaineers. All these people are perfectly worthy, but my concern is to assert the right of people to have access once again to all the land that can make a community more viable. The greatest obscenity in the highlands and islands is that tiny communities have to cling for their very existence to a peninsula or island, while the vast area behind them is denied to them as it is still held for deer, or for some other useless purpose for which it was taken a century or a century and a half ago. Until that historic wrong has been righted, the whole issue of access to land in Scotland, particularly in the highlands and islands, will not have been addressed. The issue should have been addressed, politically and legislatively, a long time ago. There is much unfinished business.
I accept the remarks of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) about the other side of this argument, about the danger of putting the power in the hands of conservation bodies or of defining too tightly the areas to which people should have access. If areas are defind too tightly, it may be inferred that areas that are not defined are not open to people. This is the argument against rights of way. The balance has to be maintained. This matter will be considered by a Labour Government. It is necessary to get the balance right and, where necessary, to enshrine rights.
In this context, it is appropriate to quote Bill Murray, a respected mountaineer and writer on mountains. He said recently:
There is now too much uncertainty about the legal situation regarding public access to land.


That is one side of the coin. The other is that we should not, for the sake of giving a liberal freedom, over-restrict by defining a liberal freedom. That is the balance we must get right.
In conclusion——

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Alan Clark): Hear, hear.

Mr. Wilson: The Government Whip should not come in at this point to say, "Hear, hear."

Mr. Clark: I said it.

Mr. Wilson: Maybe the Minister should watch his tongue. We know something about his activities in the part of the world about which we are talking. If he wants to have the debate turned in that direction——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will oblige me by returning to the amendment.

Mr. Wilson: If the Minister does not desist, he and his hon. Friends will be here for a very long time tonight. We shall be delighted to get into a debate about the stewardship of land in the highlands and islands and about his right to hold so much land there. If he wants to have a debate, let him come to the Dispatch Box. Many hon. Members would say that lie has no such right and that he is an impediment to the lives of, and a parasite upon, the people of the highlands and islands. [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Wilson: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene? Can he speak only from his backside position? Does he want to enter into the debate?

Sir Hector Monro: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will you please ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the word "parasite"? Surely it is quite improper.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I should be obliged if the hon. Gentleman would withdraw the word "parasite" so that we may get on with the debate in an orderly fashion.

Mr. Wilson: I shall alter it to say that the whole breed of landlords, particularly absentee landowners in the highlands and islands, are parasites. I say so with absolute confidence. This is not peculiar to the Minister. He is one of that breed. Let me remind you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it was he, with his remarks from a sedentary position, who introduced this note into the debate. These issues matter to the people who live in the region. The Minister is an irrelevance at best, and a parasite at worst.

Mr. Alan Clark: The hon. Gentleman should not make accusations of that kind. I do not give a damn whether this may be thought to be extraneous to the debate. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] I withdraw the word "damn". I do not care a fig for the niceties of this procedure. The hon. Gentleman has made accusations against me. He should justify those accusations. I suspect that he does not know anything about the way in which my family administers its land in Sutherland. We believe that we administer it as responsibly and decently as possible. The hon. Gentleman should flesh out his accusations. He need take only a minute and a half to do so. I should be glad to listen to any

charge in support of his serious allegations. Some would say that such allegations against a parliamentary colleague are improper.

Mr. Wilson: rose——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am more interested, and the House is more interested, in hearing a debate about the amendment that is before us than in hearing a debate about personalities. I shall be grateful if hon. Members on both sides of the House would deal with the amendment.

Mr. Wilson: I shall be very happy to get back to the subject under debate. May I say, for the record, that I was totally unaware of the hon. Gentleman's presence in the Chamber until he chose to intervene?

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The record will stand.

Mr. Wilson: The record will stand, as will my remarks.
This is a debate about access to land in Scotland. It is about the need for legislation to assert the historic right to roam. It is about freedom of access to land and about the redevelopment of communities which have been excluded in recent times. These are proud clauses with a very long history, and I am very pleased to associate myself with them.

Question put and negatived.

Clause 3

DUTY TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN MATTERS

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I beg to move amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 44, leave out `, and' and insert';
( ) the interests of owners and occupiers of land, and'.
Clause 3 identifies the wide range of interests that the SNH should take into account in carrying out its functions. We have been reflecting further on the wording of the paragraphs of this clause to ensure that they are both all-embracing and have sufficient clarity to enable the SNH to operate effectively. The needs of agriculture, fisheries and forestry and the needs of social and economic development in Scotland or any part of Scotland cover the majority of situations. We accepted an amendment tabled in another place to the effect that the SNH should take appropriate account of the interests of local communities.
As was said in Committee, the definition of "communities" is not an easy one. We wish to ensure that the interests of owners and occupiers of land, who will be major partners with SNH in conserving and enhancing the natural heritage, are taken fully into account. Without taking the interests of owners and occupiers of land, as well as the interests of local communities, into account, the SNH will not be able to perform its statutory functions effectively.
I emphasise that, while the amendment in no way means that SNH will be beholden to owners and occupiers of land, it will be expected, where appropriate, to take their interest into account, along with the other needs and interests set out in the clause, in carrying out its functions. It will be for SNH to judge in each case what the balance should be between the different needs and interests as set out in the clause. I hope that the House will also appreciate


that SNH is expected to take only appropriate account of those various needs and interests. It cannot override its primary aims and purposes as set out in clause 1.

Mr. Dalyell: How much consultation has taken place over this issue? I understand from Dave Morris, representing the ramblers, from Wildlife Link, from Michael Taylor and others, that there has been little consultation, and that, in any event, the consultation period was due to go on until the late summer. People are asking, in effect, "Are the Government not sufficiently interested in our views to wait until the consultation has taken place?" The Government may have their side of the story on that. If so, may we be told it? I ask because serious people who are not automatically hostile to the Government are aggrieved by what has occurred. Will the Minister clarify the position?

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I am not certain to what the hon. Gentleman is referring. There have been a number of consultation documents and we have tabled the amendment partly as a result of debates in the other place on the balance, duty and nature of the provision to ensure that it covers all necessary matters, without making it too specific, so that we shall not have to change the clause year by year. We think that we have the balance right and that it is appropriate for the amendment to be made.

Mr. Maclennan: I welcome the amendment. It may open up the possibility of judicial review of action taken by the SNH, which is apparently in defiance of the interests of owners and occupiers of land. It may give them a locus standi in the courts. That may be a residual remedy if the SNH were to exercise its functions with little regard for some of the interests of the community, in the way in which the predecessor organisation did in the past. I believe that some people with interests in, for example, forestry and farming or in activities with some economic benefit to the community, had those interests interfered with by the predeessor organisation. They will now have access to the courts, and while that may never be necessary —I hope that disputes will be resolved amicably—the amendment could be valuable in that respect and should be supported.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 19

DROUGHT ORDERS

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I beg to move amendment No. 10, in page 13, leave out lines 22 to 24 and insert
'and where applications are made both by a board and by an authority in respect of the same locality, the Secretary of State may make separate drought orders in favour of the board and in favour of the authority.'.
This amendment seeks to clarify that the Secretary of State may, if appropriate, grant orders both to a water authority and to a water development board in respect of a drought affecting one area. While it might be expected that the water authority could be in the lead in such cases, a board would require an order to allow it to meet any request from the authority for additional supplies. The problem might be that, in case of drought, the water authority would need extra supplies from the Central

Scotland water development board, which had huge supplies, and both the water authority and the development board would need a drought order of their own to achieve that.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 27

SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT

Amendments made: No 11, in page 19, line 45 after `4(2)', insert 'and (4) of this Act'.

No. 12, in page 19, line 45, after '26', insert 'of'.

No. 13, in page 19, line 46, after '11', insert `to this Act'. —[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

Schedule 2

AMENDMENT OF ENACTMENTS CONFERRING NATURE CONSERVATION FUNCTIONS

Amendment made: No. 14, in page 24, line 35, after '21)', insert ', in subsection (7)(a)' —[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

Schedule 8

PROCEDURE FOR MAKING DROUGHT ORDERS

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I beg to move amendment No. 15, in page 39, line 30, after 'circulating', insert `(i)'.

Madam Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time Government amendments Nos. 16, 17 and 18.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: This series of amendments would add to the advertisement requirements for drought order applications the requirement for an advertisement in the area from which alternative supplies of water are proposed to be taken to meet deficiencies elsewhere. This is appropriate so that those who have an interest in the alternative sources may have an opportunity to raise any objections to the applications.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 16, in page 39, line 31, after `order', insert'; and
(ii) within any locality from which, in the opinion of the applicant, an alternative supply is likely to be taken,'.

No. 17, in page 40, line 29, after 'place', insert '(i)'.

No. 18, in page 40, line 30, after 'order', insert '; and
(ii) within the locality from which, in the opinion of the applicant, an alternative supply of water is likely to be taken,'. —[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

Schedule 10

MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS

Mr. Galbraith: I beg to move amendment No. 3, in page 45, line 12, leave out 'quarter' and insert 'third'.

Madam Deputy Speaker: It will be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time the following amendments: No 4, in page 45, line 17, leave out 'quarter' and insert 'third'.
No. 5, in page 45, line 22, leave out 'half' and insert `third'.

Mr. Galbraith: An aspect that has characterised the Bill has been the amount of cross-party agreement and support for the measure and many of its provisions, and our debates—barring the odd incident such as that which occurred a few moments ago—have been held in good spirit with consideration of each others position. But the provision dealing with the variation and composition of river purification boards is a piece of nasty political spite and represents manoeuvring and gerrymandering by the Government.
The Government intend to reduce the number of local authority representatives on the boards. We are dealing here not simply with an isolated incident but with a pattern that has developed while the Conservatives have been in power. They have gradually been removing the democratically elected representatives on boards, replacing them with their own sycophantic appointees and lackeys. That has been happening to health boards and many other institutions for which the Government have responsibility.
This nasty trend is being continued with river purification hoards. The Government have sought, through amendments introduced in Committee, to reduce to a minimum the number of local authority representatives. It has been a case of death by a thousand cuts. We fear that, in due course, the Government will introduce regulations to reduce their numbers still further, until such bodies are stuffed full of Government appointees. those bodies becoming nothing short of rest homes for failed Tory candidates and failed former MPs. Is it nothing more than once again a nasty piece of political spite to try to achieve by subterfuge and devious methods what they cannot do by democratic means?

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Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: As the Opposition know, we consulted widely before making the provision. The vast majority of those consulted agreed with us and not with the Opposition on the matter. The change which we intend to make in the proportions of members of river purification boards is linked to our plan also to reduce the size of boards, while nevertheless enabling a wider range of interests to be appointed by the Secretary of State. Clearly, if we have smaller boards but need more places for Secretary of State appointments, we would have to reduce the number of other appointments made. That would mean reducing the numbers appointed by regional and district councils.
I emphasise that our proposals will still make certain that half of each board comprises local authority members. Their contribution is most certainly valued. The other half, although appointed by the Secretary of State, will represent not his interests but, as at present, those of the various groups to which they belong. Indeed, the views of industry, wildlife bodies, ecology interests, commercial fisheries, anglers and others should rightly be heard.
The plans do not add up to centralisation of control; far from it. What they mean is that the river purification boards will be seen to be independent, as they should be, of both central and local government.
I should also mention in relation to the boards that it is important not to erode their independence. Councils are not free to alter the amounts requisitioned by the river purification boards or to transfer those funds to other areas of local authority expenditure; nor are boards

accountable to councils as such but ultimately to the Secretary of State. They set their own budgets and make their own decisions. They publish annual reports, and any member of the public is free to take up any matter with any board member directly.
The essence of the matter is that the change has been introduced because the vast majority of responses to consultation supported it.

Amendment negatived.

Amendments made: No. 19, in page 47, line 26, at end insert—
`( ) a Natural Heritage Area designated under section 6 of the Natural Heritage (Scotland) Act 1991;'.

No. 20, in page 47, line 47, at beginning insert—
'(1) The Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 shall be amended as follows.'.

No. 21, in page 47, line 47, leave out
`of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984'.

No. 22, in page 47, line 51, at end insert—
'(3) In section 98(1) (control of stray and other animals on roads) for the word "countryside" there shall be substituted the word "land".'.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

Schedule 11

REPEALS

Amendment made: No. 23, in page 49, line 29, column 3, at end insert—
'In section 98, subsection (6).'.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am sure that the House is by now very familiar with the main purpose behind the Bill: to establish Scottish Natural Heritage by merging the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland and the Countryside Commission for Scotland. To that end, the Bill provides SNH with general aims and purposes, sets out its various functions and responsibilities and updates particular powers which it will inherit from its predecessor bodies under existing legislation. The House will know that we consider that the Bill offers SNH a positive and flexible framework within which to operate in pursuit of its goal of the improved management and conservation of our precious natural heritage throughout Scotland.

Mr. Dalyell: Having listened patiently, does the Secretary of State agree that, when he talks of goals, the first goal that he and his colleagues will have to consider is the difficult question of the Mar Lodge estate? It is legitimate to ask the Secretary of State, who has heard the exchange, whether he accepts that he has a special responsibility in that matter.

Mr. Lang: I heard the hon. Gentleman's interventions earlier on the matter. I think that it would be inappropriate for me to seek to add anything to what my hon. Friend has already said in reply. Apart from anything else, the matter is not covered by the Bill, which is what we are debating on Third Reading.
There have, of course, been valuable and constructive debates on a number of points at each of the various stages of the Bill, and I am grateful to all hon. Members who contributed to them. We have made a number of important changes to the Bill as a result. We have introduced clause 6, which provides for the opportunity


for the establishment of natural heritage areas. We have removed the former clause 11, which would have required SNH to review all existing sites of special scientific interest, with subsequent appeals against continued designation. We have also amended the balancing duty of clause 3 to require SNH to take appropriate account of the conservation of archaeological and historical sites.
We also made some rather technical but nevertheless significant changes to clause 4 to make sure that SNH's relationship to the Joint Nature Conservancy Council will be exactly the same as the NCCS's. A new clause, clause 12, was added to extend to SNH the provisions of part II of the Countryside (Scotland) Act 1967. It will allow the new body, as well as planning authorities, to enter into access agreements or promote access orders designed to allow the public access to open country.
Even more importantly, perhaps, the Bill has given us the chance to discuss the major issues facing Scotland's natural heritage. These include the national parks debate, the principles of the SSSI system, fish farming and forestry. We have also had informed discussions about the importance of a Gaelic name for SNH and, of course, the question of the possible reintroduction of wolves and wild boars.
Hon. Members will also know that parts II and III make important provision for dealing with water resources with regard to irrigation and drought in Scotland. Further provisions on the management of water resources have been introduced during the passage of the Bill—for example, the raising of penalties for certain offences under the Sewerage (Scotland) Act 1968.
I am confident, and have been throughout my involvement with the Bill, that it is a necessary and important step towards the better understanding and use of our natural heritage. With the dedication and commitment of its staff and the co-operation of all those concerned in land use and management,. I believe that SNH will be successful in its aims. I thank hon. Members for the efficient way in which they have dealt with consideration of the Bill, both in Committee and in the Chamber.
I believe that the important amendments which we have made to the Bill in this House are crucial to the proper working of SNH, and I trust that all concerned, including those in another place, will see the wisdom and value of what we are doing by means of the Bill. I commend it to the House.

Mr. Wilson: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his remarks about the work of the Committee. The Committee's and tonight's proceedings—with a brief blemish from the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Clark), who has now mercifully departed—were amicable and constructive. We share the aim of improving a Bill to create an agency that will work effectively to achieve the ends for which it is being set up. I have enjoyed the Committee's work and tonight's proceedings and believe that we have a better Bill now than we had at the start. In that spirit, we shall send a message to Scottish Natural Heritage that it is the profound hope of Labour

Members that, when it comes into operation, it will do its work well for all the people and the natural inheritance of Scotland which is entrusted to it and to all of us.
I wish to press the Secretary of State once more on the question of Mar Lodge. Clearly, it is at the forefront of the debate in environmental terms. There seems to be wide support for the idea that it should be transferred to some form of public or community ownership. When we can unite an American billionaire, Prince Charles and every environmental organisation in the country, it would be a pity if the Secretary of State were to prove the impediment out of pure apathy. I do not suggest that, of the cast that I have mentioned, I am the most influential, but the Secretary of State would have the full support of the Labour party if he took steps to ensure that the aim of bringing Mar Lodge estate into public ownership was pursued. In deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), I should have included the editorial writers of The Daily Telegraph in the list of personalities who support that aim.
Will the Secretary of State make a positive statement on Mar Lodge? There seems to be unanimity in the view that it is very special. It should not return to the vagaries of the marketplace once again, because over the past decade——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. All right hon. and hon. Members present are considerable parliamentarians. They know that Third Reading is a difficult debate, because it concerns only what is now in the legislation. I have been tolerant of the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), who moved far from the amendments, but he cannot press that point now. I should be grateful if he would return to Third Reading.

Mr. Wilson: I mentioned Mar Lodge in the context of Scottish Natural Heritage, which the Bill is creating and in the context of national parks. If Mar Lodge were brought into public ownership, it would immediately become a question——

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have given my ruling. The hon. Gentleman will oblige the House and not abuse our procedures.

Mr. Wilson: On the issue of national parks, it is no secret that the Opposition were sympathetic to the idea, and the Government have come forward with a compromise. It is still our view that the Government should have allowed maximum flexibility in each of the areas under pressure. In Committee we had a debate about Loch Lomond, where there is clearly a strong body of opinion that national park status is desirable. Equally, parts of Scotland have been mentioned in the context of the national parks, where there is a general view that what the Government propose to set up and achieve under the Bill may be adequate for their management.
I hope that there will be the maximum possible flexibility within the terms of what has been created. I particularly hope, in deference to to the excellent case made in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) for national park status for Loch Lomond, that resources will be provided to meet the needs of that district. Even if the name "national park" is not used, some of the advantages that would have flown from it being a national park should be available to that part of Scotland which, even now, is under so much pressure.
On the issue of SSSIs, it is worth recalling, because it is now quite a long time ago, that we removed something from the Bill that the other place had introduced. We certainly regarded it—I think that the Government's decision to withdraw it would suggest that they shared our view—as a wrecking amendment, whereby the new agency would have to spend several of its first few years of existence trotting around every existing SSSI to re-designate it. That would have created a high hurdle in terms of an appeals procedure.
The Minister and the hon. Members for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) and for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) showed that they sympathised with the idea of an appeals procedure, even where they accepted that the procedure suggested by the Lords was not workable. In Committee, everyone concluded that the proposal introduced in the Lords should be removed, on the understanding that there would be a far healthier process of consultation than some people have experienced under the existing set-up. I am sure that the message could not have gone out any more strongly to Scottish Natural Heritage that, although there is no appeals procedure, there must be maximum sensitivity to the needs and interests of the people who live in regions affected by the designation of SSSIs.
I hope that the Minister will activate the valuable concession that he gave us over forestry, as it affects communities close to districts to be afforested—that a gazette or some other publication will list proposed forestry developments. That will prevent any mystery and ensure that no private forests appear from nowhere without the local community knowing about them. I hope that information will be circulated to organisations such as public libraries, community councils and local authorities. I was grateful for that assurance in Committee, and I hope that the Minister will communicate to me exactly how it will be implemented.
We had a wide range of debates in Committee on the powers that we suggested should be given to the new agency. Those exploratory debates gave us an opportunity to raise the issues of environmental concern in Scotland—fish farming, the movement of shipping in the Minch, the possibility of an oil spillage, forestry and a range of environmental issues. We have concluded that process tonight with our debate on the nuclear possibilities at Dounreay. In every one of those cases, we are happy to take at face value the assurances of the Minister that there is no need to write into the legislation the duty to make representations to the Secretary of State on such matters, because the right to do so is assumed.
I hope that Scottish Natural Heritage will be emboldened by the repeated statements of the Minister that it is expected to make representations on all those contentious issues. We want an environmental organisation with teeth and courage that is prepared to speak on issues, even if it treads on the toes of its political masters or mistresses, irrespective of the party from which they come. It is there to serve not political masters but Scotland's environmental interests. I hope that it will be encouraged by the Minister's clear message that it is expected to do so.
In fairness, I ought to say that, if the Government had wanted to establish a compliant and silent agency, they would not have appointed so high profile a chairman as Magnus Magnusson. That is turning out to be a good appointment, and we wish him well.
We have had a constructive and largely non-political debate. Anything to do with land use and land ownership in Scotland gives rise to debate. For all sorts of reasons, land use and land ownership matter deeply to a wide range of people. There are those who believe that they should not impinge upon the rights of private ownership. Some people would go to very great and arrogant lengths to defend those rights. There are others who will never accept the validity of those rights. Between those two positions, we have to work out a modus vivendi. The Bill lays the foundations for the creation of an agency that will be able to work well in the interests of Scotland and its natural heritage.
In that spirit, I thank in particular the Minister for the courteous way in which he has conducted all the proceedings on the Bill. When it comes into being, we wish the new agency well. We shall work with it, and we hope that it will be a great success.

Sir Hector Monro: I am delighted that the Bill has completed its proceedings in the House, subject to anything that may happen later. It is a Bill of great vision. I am excited about the future of Scotland's natural heritage. Having been connected with the drafting of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill in 1979 and with taking it through the House, with the help of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and others, and having served on the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland for nine years, I find it slightly paradoxical that I am no longer involved in any official capacity with our natural heritage and that I am very much on the touchline.
The provisions of the Bill will improve and enhance Scotland's heritage. The very best of the Nature Conservancy Council, now in its own Scottish right, coupled with the expertise of the Countryside Commission and the two chairmen, running in harness this year and working closely together to set up Scottish Natural Heritage on 1 April 1992, can do nothing but good. The Secretary of State for Scotland has chosen a man of exceptional calibre to head it. The personnel and resources of the two committees are equally strong. Both organisations will have the back-up of an excellent permanent staff. I have great hope that what we are all so keen on in Scotland—the preservation of our natural heritage—will come about.
The amendments that were debated both in Committee and on Report have demonstrated the great enthusiasm in all parts of the House for preserving Scotland's natural heritage. They have highlighted the fact that, in future, emphasis must be placed upon improving what is already a very good record. We tend to play down our scenery and landscape and our good record on nature conservation and the preservation of wildlife habitats. We are starting from a very sound base. I wish the Secretary of State, the two chairmen and, subsequently, Magnus Magnusson, every good fortune. I am sure that we can look forward to immeasurably improved facilities in Scotland, and I am confident that the Government will provide sufficient resources to ensure that our heritage is maintained and enhanced.

Mr. Maclennan: The Bill did not attract universal acclamation from the environment lobby, and the Government have displayed some political courage in bringing it to the House against the critical view that the Scots should not look after their environment. That was an insulting view which, from the beginning, most Scots rejected.
Most of the main environmental issues have been canvassed during the passage of the Bill, and the concerns that gave rise to a demand for a new Scottish agency were properly ventilated. The Secretary of State responded with some imagination, which I found encouraging, to the concerns in my constituency about the way in which the predecessor organisation had handled the issue of the flow country. The establishment of natural heritage areas under the provisions of clause 6 could provide a way to reconcile the various land interests.
I did not have the good fortune to be a member of the Standing Committee, so I did not have the opportunity to deploy certain arguments. It is right to recognise that the expertise of Scottish Natural Heritage in scientific matters will be the best available, and that there would be no point in having an appeal system. However, as designation will result in the transformation of the status of the land, with consequences of great importance to those who own or occupy the land, and the community that uses it, there should be a requirement for the Secretary of State to confirm the new status. I regret that that is not included in the Bill, but this is not an occasion on which we should linger overlong on what is not included.
My argument was somewhat misrepresented by the Minister at an earlier stage, when it was suggested that my hon. Friends and I wanted an appeal system. We wanted no such thing—we wanted to establish the right of the Secretary of State to intervene when designation could have adverse consequences. I think that that was a legitimate objective. If clause 6 is to be the way ahead, it is possible that conflict will not arise. That will depend on how Scottish Natural Heritage uses the power of designation of sites of special scientific interest. If it goes full steam ahead and designates large tracts of Scotland, rather than using the proposals in clause 6, I predict that there will be conflict.
We should have a clear statement, not about consultation—we have already had that from Magnus Magnusson and his colleagues—but about the policy intention on widespread designation. The Secretary of State has admitted that that power was used in the absence of any other power, for purposes that the House did not envisage when the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 was enacted. I think that that is the view of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), who has a closer knowledge of, and involvement in, the matter than any other hon. Member. No one wants to see a continuation of past conflicts.
Clause 6 provides for sites of special scientific interest that have already been designated in pursuance of the objectives that the clause would cover. I do not accept the view of some that for the next few years, the agency should reconsider all designations because that would be damaging to its role. However, there may be a case for it reconsidering designations in some sectors that would be better covered by the procedures set out in clause 6. It would be extremely sensible for the agency to place a

moratorium on the designation of sites of special scientific interest in the flow countries, especially while it contemplates the use of powers that allow representations to be made about the economic impact of what is proposed and, ultimately, for the Secretary of State to decide what is the best way to proceed. I appeal to Magnus Magnusson to issue a clear statement that there will be a moratorium pending consideration of the powers that are set out in clause 6.
In other respects, I welcome the Bill as a strengthening of the protection of our environment in Scotland. I believe that the interest of the Scottish people in seeing that environment improved and protected is one that everyone in the House who has participated in debates on the Bill has sought to reflect, and that that approach is reflected in the shape of the Bill as it has emerged following consideration on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. The Bill has been improved because the Government have responded to suggestions and listened to criticisms. We can take some pride and satisfaction in the fact that the House has agreed to the setting up of a new institution that will bring together the work of two former agencies. The redefining of the roles of those agencies will give a sharper cutting edge to the work that is so important to our country.

Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) referred to what can be described as the in-house matters of dealing with those who wish to appeal against decisions that will be made under clause 6. The clause does not provide for a particularly happy system. I spoke at some length on the issue in Committee, but I shall not do so this evening. If the matter is not taken up in the other place, I believe that we shall return to it in future.
I shall be astonished if Scottish Natural Heritage does not behave in an understanding and sympathetic way. I am sure that it will engage in consultations that will be different from those that have taken place in the past. I hope that that will happen, but all my experience is that bureaucratic bodies, despite all the good wishes of Parliament, have a tendency to develop what I call god-like postures after they have been in existence for some time. With that fear in mind, I tabled an amendment, as did other hon. Members.
I shall be surprised if the matter is not canvassed when the Bill is considered in another place. I am fairly sure that those in the other place will debate it. Whatever happens finally to the Bill, I believe that the system that is set out in clause 6 will constantly be considered.
However, this is an important and substantial Bill for Scotland. It will change things in many ways and for the better. We all hope that we will care for, use properly, look after and make use of our natural heritage. By "we", I mean the Scots and all those who visit Scotland. We can certainly say that we have given our children and our children's children a basis on which they can look forward to enjoying the delights and beauty of beautiful Scotland.

Mr. McFall: Some hon. Members have said that the Bill has received universal acclamation, but it certainly does not have it from me. The mountain areas of Scotland and


consultation management have not been addressed, and in the years to come the problems will pile up, particularly in my area.
Clause 2 deals with the functions of Scottish Natural Heritage. People in my area are crying out for legislative proposals so that the issues affecting the Loch Lomond area can be addressed. It is manifest that the present arrangements whereby local authorities come together are not working effectively and will not work in the long term. I plead with the Minister and with Magnus Magnusson the chairman-designate, to take into consideration, with the working party which the Minister kindly offered me, that legislative aspect and the crucial aspect of funding.
The Bill does not address funding. As I said in Committee, we have national parks for England and Wales and Government funding of 80 per cent. In a current White Paper, the Department of the Environment calls the national parks of England and Wales the jewels in the crown. We do not have that. The comparison with England and Wales is bad enough, but in a European and international context we are the odd man out. We are very much the poor relation.
The Minister has done nothing to enhance the environment of my area. The Scottish Council for National Parkas has recently been re-established. It mentions in a communication sent to us that natural heritage areas are intended to be substitutes for national parks, and I agree. That is based on the voluntary principle. But the voluntary principle has to date failed to take care of the environment. If the Minister comes to Loch Lomond with me this summer, he will see the effects and inadequacies of the voluntary principle, and the need for a solution for Loch Lomond. That is not on offer from the Government at the moment.
The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) said that bureaucracies have a way of their own and become godlike. I fear that the NHA has been set in concrete and that there will be nothing good on offer for my area. That is the worry in my area.
I said in Committee that there was a manifest agreement among community groups in my area about the desirability of national park status. Rural community councils like Callender, which is not in my constituency but in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), voted strongly to be included in the national park area. I have received no adverse comments on the issue of the national park status and I would like the Minister to tell us about any comments he has had from people on that subject.
A letter dated 3 December 1990 from Magnus Magnusson, the chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland, to the Countryside Commission says:
The status of the designation and its protective powers should be commensurate with the relative importance of the areas in Europe or wider international term..
How can natural heritage areas come within the European or international context when they are not established along the lines of national parks, when they do not have independent planning or adequate funding? That is the first issue that Magnus Magnusson and his colleagues will have to address. In the same letter, Magnus Magnusson said:
The budget allocated to the area must be adequate for reasonable attainment of priorities determined for the overall management of the area.
That is not happening.
In my letter to the Minister on 5 April 1991—which I am sure he has received—I said that the constituent local authorities for Loch Lomond regional park are dismayed at the latest exercise with regard to a working party. I have reason to believe that we shall not get far with that. A communication from Dumbarton district council tells me that it has been informed that in correspondence with the Scottish Office the working party's remit is to consider how improvements may be achieved within the existing statutory and administrative framework; and that there is a current school of thought which believes that the working party would be at officer level only.
One important aspect of any working party is that it should represent local interest and involve local authority and community representatives. It is local authority, community and voluntary representatives who know their own areas. It is no use leaving it to those at officer level. There must be input from the local community or the problems of the area will not be considered in their entirety.
Natural heritage areas are inadequate for Loch Lomond, as are the voluntary principle, the lack of funding and the lack of planning powers. I tell the Minister that tonight and I will tell him that for years to come. There is a huge body of Scottish environmental opinion behind me, because the need for enhancement and conservation for a strategy for land management for the mountain areas of Scotland is important. The Bill does not deal with those issues. I welcome it as a little step forward, but it has had almost fatal flaws from the beginning. Even at this stage, I ask the Minister to reconsider the Bill when it returns from another place and to listen to the people in Scotland because I am speaking for many of them. I ask the Minister to respond to local feelings and, when the Bill returns to the House, to give us some of the tools with which properly to manage our land and our heritage.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: There was an enormous contrast between the speech of the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) and that of the Secretary of State for Scotland, who believes the Bill to be perfect in every way. It is not perfect, but it has been improved since it arrived in the House by, for example, the fateful disappearance of the notorious clause 11.
However, there are still massive gaps in the Bill, for example, on the dumping of nuclear and toxic waste and on the concept or clear definition of sustainability. I hope that the Minister's promise about community involvement will be fulfilled in practice. I notice that there is a major gap in the Bill on the question of land use in Scotland. I hope that the House will deal with such topics in the future.
The Bill is at least a step towards a co-ordinated view of the Scottish environment and has at least attempted to create an integrated approach to Scottish environmental needs. If Mr. Magnusson's promises are fulfilled, I hope that we shall see a decentralised approach in which, as far as possible, there will be a decentralisation of decision taking and contact with local communities.
I am disappointed that, although there has been an improvement in the Bill, that improvement is partial and under-powered compared to the Scottish environmental protection agency that I should like to see in an ideal and independent Scotland. At least the Bill is a small step in the


right direction. I should like to wish Magnus Magnusson and the staff of the Scottish Natural Heritage well in their work. Their task will not be easy, but it will be of massive importance to the future of Scotland.

Mr. Kennedy: I do not propose to interrupt the running order, and I shall be brief.

Mr. Galbraith: Good.

Mr. Kennedy: It is typical of the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) to shatter the all-party consensus which was emerging in the closing stages. I want to make a contribution now, as I was not a member of the Committee. As Wester Ross featured heavily in the discussions of national parks, I should like to say a couple of words, almost in contrast to the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall).
I shall begin with an opening principle. The beauty of the legislation—if it works—is that stated by the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson). It has within it a degree of flexibility which, if it is to succeed and to perform well in the years ahead, means that it can come up with a variety of different solutions based on the realities of different communities and different parts of Scotland. That must be a strength.
The weakness of the argument for the level of community responsiveness and the different working blueprint for different areas is that if one is not careful one ends up with anarchy. No one has angled seriously for that for our natural heritage and conservation. I want to go back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). We must recognise that the argument of the hon. Member for Dumbarton for a national park, independent planning and proper resourcing may be the blueprint for Loch Lomond, given its proximity to the conurbation of west central Scotland and to Glasgow in particular, but it would not fit easily or acceptably in the context of Wester Ross, which is a rather different environment.

Mr. McFall: In Committee, I tabled various new clauses with specific reference to Loch Lomond. I made the point then that different solutions are required for different areas. I said that the sensitivities of people in the area had to be upheld. I was speaking about my own area.

Mr. Kennedy: I was aware of that point, and that is why I am only too pleased to be able to speak in the hon. Gentleman's support. He obviously speaks with more local working knowledge of Loch Lomond than I can and he makes a powerful case. However, the same case may not apply to other areas, whether the Cairngorms or Wester Ross.
My next point is for the Minister, although it might now be made more appropriately to Magnus Magnusson. Highland regional council is very much encouraged by Mr. Magnusson's approach and by his attitude to the post. He has visited various parts of the Highland region, and he has had some contact with the regional authority and with people at local level. He is sensitive to the anxieties involved.
In the whole saga of sites of special scientific interest, as other hon. Members know only too well, there has been

anxiety about an imposed national park in part of the highlands. The tremendous anxiety that has followed from that is that people from outside the area will call the shots. It is feared that there may even be no shots to be called because an iron curtain will be drawn around the area and no development in the local interest will be allowed. That is a genuine anxiety, which Mr. Magnusson appreciates. The Bill sets out a framework that will allow him sufficient flexibility, subject to the guidance of the Scottish Office, to produce an environmental policy that can square that difficult circle—to protect and promote the indigenous natural beauty while not stifling it. The aim should be to enable future generations to make a livelihood from the area as the present generation can.
One of the most encouraging features of the constituency postbag—I am sure that hon. Members of all parties find the same—is the tremendous increase in the number of schoolchildren who now write to Members of Parliament. Hon. Members who have served in the House for decades longer than I have have also registered that. I find that, apart from the broad global issues such as the third world, schoolchildren increasingly write to Members of Parliament about environmental issues.
In the highland context, I hope that that demonstrates an awareness of the importance of the natural environment. It also shows that those who are being born, brought up and educated within that environment have a sensible sensitivity to the need to enhance it and at the same time to the need to be able to promote development in the area which will be for their future well-being as regards job opportunities. That means that one does not want to turn the highlands into a natural history museum with the presumption that people will not be able to live and make a livelihood there, but wants to ensure that the livelihood conforms as much as possible to the natural environment.
Given all the slings and arrows of fortune that have on occasion been fired against highlanders, they have done a pretty good job of being responsible about the environment while exploiting it, in the proper sense of the word, for their future well-being.
I hope that the Minister, the Scottish Office and Magnus Magnusson will be extremely careful in any moves that they might make to designate natural heritage areas. We do not want to end up with the sort of national park blueprint that might well suit Loch Lomond but would not be the right solution to achieve a balance between conservation and development in Wester Ross and other parts of the highlands.

Mr. Dalyell: An 11-year-old wrote to me inquiring:
How come a person in Mr. Magnus Magnusson's position could possibly be in favour of whaling. Answer that.
I am still contemplating the reply, because I am not sure that there is one.

Mr. Wilson: Pass.

Mr. Dalyell: Pass. During the recess, I heard you say, Mr. Speaker, on "The Week in Westminster" that the best Members of Parliament were the most unreasonable.

Mr. Speaker: Yes, but I said "not too unreasonable".

Mr. Dalyell: I am being reasonably unreasonable, when I say that I think that Third Reading is certainly a time for


politenesses, but also a time to talk to the House of Lords if one wants to. because they will have to consider the Bill further.
As regards politeness, the Minister has certainly been a model of courtesy and decency in Committee, and I must couple that with the courtesy that I have received from his office and from other officials of the Scottish Office on the many occasions that I have had dealings with them. I have no doubts of the seriousness of purpose of both the Minister and his officials. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) who was Chairman of the Committee.
I am deeply discontented by what we have done. There are geological flaws in the Bill. During the recess, I reflected carefully on exactly what we have been up to. As I see it, the position is this. The Government have enacted legislation to create an independent Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland. To be fair, there is merit in placing in the hands of the Secretary of State for Scotland a clear responsibility for the conservation of Scotland's wildlife and for ensuring that nature conservation has a full place in the debate about land use in Scotland.
However the cost of that change has been high in disruption of the scientific conservation effort, in the alienation of much informed opinion on conservation and in the loss of morale among concerned and involved staff.
Perhaps the first geological fault is that landscape and wildlife conservation simply are not compatible bedmates: they do not go together. The Government's proposals for mergers postulate that landscape and wildlife conservation are natural partners for merger. We need to ask whether that proposition is appropriate for functions of different origins, approaches and ethics. Those differences are important.
The roots of landscape conservation lie in planning for the built environment and concern to conserve the designed and man-made landscape structure of much of our countryside. That is an aesthetic approach. Nature conservation has its origins in study of natural history and its practice is underpinned by scientific survey and assessment. That is an ecological approach. Each has a different ethos, and different training, skills and legislation. Those fundamentals simply cannot be set aside in a shifting around of our administrative arrangements for delivery of conservation advice.
There is no right or wrong way in which to arrange these matters. Other countries do things differently. But it is facile to set aside the experience and structures which have evolved over a long period without any debate about whether they are right. We all know the genesis of the Bill. It was thought up by the former Environment Secretary and dispatched to the House of Commons.
A case could be made for a close alliance between landscape conservation and protection systems for historic landscapes and the built heritage. Here might lie an alternative alliance of interest in the way in which man has fashioned and continues to fashion the appearance of our land.
The Minister might ask his advisers on the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland for its views on that proposition. It has concluded that a convincing case for the linking of landscape and nature conservation functions has not been made. Far less do the proposals address the mechanics of integration. A merger, in the full sense of that word, is not realistic. The best that can be done is to staple functions together.
In my opinion, for the most part we have created elaborate window dressing. Scottish Natural Heritage is not either more powerful or more effective than its predecessor.

Mr. Maclennan: The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. We may not be creating a body which is any more powerful, but at least we are creating a body in which the two interests that he rightly described as rather different can be reconciled. Is not that a way of producing a coherent approach to the land?

Mr. Dalyell: I am not sure about that. My candid response to the hon. Gentleman is that I have to recognise that he had an unfortunate experience in his constituency with nature conservancy in the flow country. A good deal of tactlessness was involved, and Sir William Wilkinson and his colleagues regretted what happened. For reasons of time, I would rather not be drawn into discussing that interesting and important point. In all honesty, I could not tell the hon. Gentleman that he is wrong. That is not the position that I wish to take.
In the Government's earlier consultative paper about merger, "The Way Ahead", little attention was paid to the commission's recreation function. This is dismaying, because recreation is at the centre in the commission's business and it commands a significant portion of the grant that the commission disburses to its client groups in the public and private sectors. The lack of attention to recreation is alarming on several grounds.
First, for too long we have under-invested in recreation in the countryside and extra new resources are required to manage the impacts of the public use of land and to promote higher quality facilities, all of which underpin the recreation and tourism industries. This is one of the essential arguments in the commission's mountain areas report, as the Minister will concede.
Secondly, the commission promotes its recreation functions through investment and working with others, operating almost as a development agency, and funds for this approach will be less secure after merger, given the wide prospectus of new conservation initiatives proposed for the new agency.
Thirdly, the Government's consultation paper identifies recreation as a potential threat to conservation. Indeed, recreation is seen as a problem, not an opportunity—a perception that is likely to lead to recreation becoming subordinate to conservation, if carried forward.
I hope even at this stage that the Lords will reflect on these points.
Enjoyment by the public extends across the whole of our heritage, be it scenery, wildlife, the built and historic, or cultural matters. The assessment and care of heritage involve many organisations concerned with land use, planning and management. The Commission's functions for enjoyment and care of fine scenery are well balanced, because scenery is the prime attraction for most visitors to the countryside and is central to tourism. The countryside is also the resource and the backdrop for many sporting activities.
A time when the tempo of interest in leisure use of the countryside is on the increase is not the time to be playing down recreation. Nor is the time to be placing this function in a new agency where it will inevitably be in a more subordinate role because of the dominance of staff and legislation concerned with nature conservation. Any


underplaying of recreation will be regarded as controversial by recreation interests and will be likely to lead to new controversy and conflict.

Mr. Bill Walker: The hon. Gentleman is making a very important speech and certainly many of us would have wished that we could have heard some of it earlier. That is not a criticism; it is just a comment.
On the very point of recreation bodies that have an interest in the use of a our Scottish land, does the hon. Gentleman join me in deploring the absence of proper appeals procedure, which is the point I tried to make in Committee, he will remember?

Mr. Dalyell: I was, as my hon. Friends know, very tempted when the hon. Gentleman approached me to support him on appeals. I did not do so. I took a lot of trouble about it. I asked around, and a number of those with whom I was in close contact were against the appeals procedure precisely because they thought that it might be abused. It did not help his case that Lord Pearson and others in the Lords had conducted this ambush. This is my personal opinion—I cannot speak for my hon. Friends on the Front Bench and they may take a different view—but had it not been for what happened in the Lords, the hon. Gentleman would have got his amendment through. But great resentment was caused by what happened in the Lords on this issue.

Mr. Walker: What about the Committee?

Mr. Dalyell: I think that the Minister will agree that, with the exception of himself, I probably occupied more of the Committee's time than anybody.
During the recess, I reflected on this matter with colleagues, who have been very helpful, with a view to making a submission to the House of Lords to think again. I make no bones about what I should like to see happening. I should like to see a general election in June, so that we could go back to the drawing board on this whole matter. In fact, I should like to see the Bill fall.
We have to reflect on the whole question of sustainable development and whether it can be delivered. By far the most interesting element of the new proposals is the emphasis on sustainable development. The Government's desire to move in this direction is to be welcomed, but the realism of laying this task on the new agency needs examination.

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Natural Heritage (Scotland) Bill [Lords] may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Mr. Dalyell: First, there is the question whether the new agency is centrally enough placed to handle this major challenge. The central conservation issues of today pivot on the consumption—particularly by the developed nations—of increasing amounts of the world's natural resources, and on all the consequent effects on pollution, population increase, health, hunger and the social cohesion of increasingly urbanised societies.
This is a heady agenda, on which a local agency with a limited remit might make progress. It can be argued that

the scale of these issues places them at governmental or transnational level, although there is an important challenge here for a body to act in a missionary role. But this will be a provocative task, if only in defining, in a practical way, what sustainable development means. This will not necessarily lead to the kind of harmony that the Government seek in the debate about conservation and development.
The concept of sustainable development is, on the one hand, simple and, because of this, attractive. But it is also difficult to define and difficult to apply to the kind of marginal land that makes up much of upland Scotland. Let me give some examples.
We cannot easily assess whether present approaches to the management of rural land are sustainable, because of the long time scale involved in understanding the effects of present practice, and because of the complexity of the systems—for example, the debate on whether conifer afforestation of poor, acidic upland soils leads to enhanced acidification. The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) knows exactly what I am getting at, as it is highly pertinent to the kind of area that he represents.
In the assessment of gains and losses in the use of land, we cannot easily measure, or give monetary value to, the intangible benefits or values that we attach to, say, well-being and pride in our heritage, or to the enjoyment of recreation in fine countryside. It is unlikely that there is any methodology to do this with precision.
At this stage I want to pay tribute to a man I admire very much. I refer to George Lawson, a former Member of Parliament for Motherwell, and a Scottish Whip. He gave a great deal of his time to the question of land use, and published a report. I do not say that I have read the entire report, but during the recess I went back to it. I thought extremely highly of the work that George Lawson did.
It is likely that we have already passed the limits of sustainable use in the way in which we exploit land of the lowest productivity—say, in the afforestation of the very poorest land, or in the carrying capacity of some upland habitats for recreation.
So, while the sustainable development remit is attractive, it is not an easy route forward for any agency whose remit does not extend into a wide arena, and vigorous pursuit if this theme is likely to sharpen the conservation-development debate, not ease it.
The Government have made it clear that the proposed new agency must temper its functions with economic developments in rural areas. That is not quite in accord with the definition of sustainable development in which human activities should be in balance with the capacity of the natural resources being used. The dilemma here is that the Government's approach to balancing duties places undue burdens on the lightweight and lowly funded conservation bodies as against the heavily resourced mechanisms for the support of the development.
Yet evidence is lacking that conservation is a major constraint on development in Scotland. No such accusation can be made against the way in which the conservation of landscape has been delivered. For wildlife conservation, there has been a small number of high-profile cases of conflict, but that should not obscure the fact that most SSSI consultations, most management agreements and most other consultation arrangements for conservation are working smoothly. Any snags in the system should be eased through improvements in its administration rather than in its wholesale reorganisation.
My ferocious defence of the NCC staff against accusations in the debate in the other place by people who should have known better was partly due to the fact that the NCC staff as a whole, with certain exceptions—the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) referred to some unfortunate exceptions—had been very successful. It should be on the record that the NCC staff as a whole were deeply hurt by what was said in the debate in the other place. I say that having attended the estuary and other NCC presentations given by Sir William Wilkinson and Tim Hornsby.

Mr. McFall: I suggest to my hon. Friend that the people who have been betrayed are the members of the Countryside Commission, with their mountain areas report. My hon. Friend is making important points about development and conservation. In the Loch Lomond area, there is £120 million-worth of development, but we do not have the necessary statutory laws for conservation and enhancement. The result is that, on the see-saw, the balance is very much on the side of development. Interest in conservation and the enhancement of the environment is negligible compared with the pressure for development.

Mr. Dalyell: I do not exaggerate when I say that, of the 30 to 40 mostly knowledgeable people I have met who read the Official Report of the debates that took place in Committee, and in particular who read the remarks of my hon. Friend, most said, in effect, "John McFall is absolutely right, and you people in Parliament had better understand that." I refer not only to Frank Bracewell, the planning officer of Central regional council, but many others who strongly agree with the proposal put forward by my hon. Friend, who is the constituency Member involved.
I leave out the rest of the argument. My hon. Friend the Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) may be right in what he said about his area, and we do not quarrel with that, but some of us in the Central region desperately want a natural park. The whole tenor of the Government's proposals is to undermine the role of nature conservation and to give encouragement to the prejudiced view that the nature conservation movement must be brought to heel. That is nothing less than a major surrender of values. Adding to the commission's functions may be seen by some as one way of shifting the balance against nature conservation, but it is no way to create a workable merger. The early signs are that the merger is not working happily. The planning stage and the rest of what is going on are riddled with difficulties.

Mr. Nigel Griffiths>: We all acknowledge my hon. Friend's expertise in the matter, but is it not the case that one of the tragedies of the Government's approach is that the vested interests—landowners, and worse, those people who have only a financial interest in lands in Scotland, who may not be based in Scotland and who may not have any concern for the conservation of land in Scotland—seem to be listened to in the corridors of power rather than the hill walkers, the bird watchers and the other conservation groups who for over a century have had the real interest of Scotland at heart? Does my hon. Friend agree that, by his approach, the Minister is prejudicing the interests of people who enjoy, relish and have a great commitment to land and

conservation in Scotland in favour of the interests of those who have only a financial interest? That is the nub of the difference between us and the Minister.

Mr. Dalyell: I shall not stretch Mr. Speaker's patience by wandering to the question of Mar Lodge. The earlier discussion of Mar lodge completely encapsulated the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths) had made. That is why we will talk about Mar Lodge on other occasions, but I undertook not to stray back to that.
There are organisational imbalances to address in the merger. Those imbalances might be catalogued. There is a major imbalance in staff numbers, with the NCCS at the time of merger being at least six times larger. The organisation will be starting life essentially in the old offices of the NCCS, but with a new nameplate, so there will be an image issue which will run against the interests of the Countryside Commission for Scotland. The NCCS has complex and well focused legislation on designation, control licensing, land management, and so on, and those functions will still have to be delivered, while the commission's functions under statute are relatively open, and will be overshadowed by the need to achieve these key wildlife tasks. There is a very vigorous voluntary sector lobby on behalf of nature conservation, which will be pushing hard for no relaxation in the way in which nature conservation is delivered. Far from being a true merger of equals, the prospect is that the CCS functions will become overshadowed in the new arrangement.
We have a complex system for administering and overseeing land use matters. Some people think that there should be an all-embracing land use department, but there are good arguments against whole scale amalgamation of functions. Principally, the key sectoral interests should be seen to be separate and visible, without the concealment of debate that would exist in an all-purpose land-use department where controversy was balanced internally. The all-purpose approach would be bureaucratic and less efficient.
Maintaining two Government agencies would allow those functions that may be subordinated to have their place and to be visible—as in the case of recreation—to the large constituency with an interest in it. Objectives would be more focused: indeed, divergence of views on matters like conservation is to be encouraged, as fostering debate and providing the widest spectrum of views to Government. The risk of subordinating key functions is the key argument in the White Paper "This Common Inheritance" against an equivalent merger in England, and one has to ask why that argument does not apply in Scotland.
The new agency, SNH, already promises to be a small bureaucracy, with complex systems of political control and oversight. The Minister may interrupt if he thinks that I am being unfair, but there are those dangers.
Less dramatic but more cost effective, more efficient and saving of confusion and morale would be to address any need for change through administrative action. To do that, the Government should endorse the present structures as the basis for change, and encourage administrative fine-tuning of existing mechanisms where snagging points occur, such as the need for a route of appeal when promoting new designated areas.
They should provide some of the extra resources required for the merger with the relatively underfunded


Countryside Commission for Scotland and should direct that its two agencies collaborate closely on those topics where joint working makes good sense. They should promote and strengthen the commission's work in the countryside around towns where it has already made an impact and, with major dereliction now tackled by the Scottish Development Agency, direct the commission to a new role in leading smaller scale landscape improvement work in collaboration with the local enterprise companies to create a richer and more accessible landscape close to where most Scots live.
The Government should also encourage the commission to continue to develop a stronger design-based approach in its work, particulary to promote higher standards of built development in the countryside. They should release more funding to the commission to strengthen its work to promote recreation and facilitate harmony between visitors and those who own and work the land.
Finally, the Government should encourage stronger working between the conservation agencies and those agencies and Departments responsible for primary land uses. They should begin a debate about sustainable use as a collaborative venture in that way rather than through a single agency approach as proposed.
Underfunding of the Countryside Commission in recent years has left it in a weaker position than the Nature Conservancy Council because the commission's mode of working through others has led to it spend little of its resources on building up its own staff and internal activities. Although small in size, the commission has operated efficiently and prudently and chosen partnership as its main working theme. The extent of duplication of effort between the commission and the NCC is limited, and that could be eased by more collaboration.
There is a role for an agency to link caring for the countryside and its use for recreation. That is not always an appreciated role because it involves bridge-building and compromise as well as avoidance of confrontation. Recently, however, the commission has been leading lively debates on issues like caring better for mountain areas, and has been reviewing arrangements for access to the countryside.
Given a modest increase in staff and funding, the commission could play a more vigorous role and develop a distinctive approach to enjoyment and conservation of Scotland's scenery, which is the crucial resource underpinning tourism and outdoor recreation.
There has been little general debate about the technical merits of the proposed merger of the CCS and the NCC in Scotland. In part, some people may see the merger as simply a good way to simplify public administration. Some may see it as providing a new face to conservation, while others undoubtedly see the merger as a means of blunting what is perceived to be a sharp edge to conservation. But there must be a serious review of fundamentals and practicability.
I hope that the House of Lords will reconsider the Bill thoroughly, as it is entitled to do. Having read the Official Report of the Standing Committee, I hope that, saved by the gong in the form of a general election, the Labour party will put forward different proposals from the

ill-thought-out, ill-conceived and exceedingly expensive Conservative party proposals, which will cause a great deal of hassle.

Mr. Galbraith: I shall put everyone's mind at rest by reassuring them that I have no intention of following that tour de force, but shall simply make a few closing remarks.
I have spent the last part of my life in the mountains, and I have a love affair with the mountains and the countryside—in other words, Scottish Natural Heritage, which is what the Bill is about. Therefore, I was pleased to be part of the process of taking the Bill through its stages, along with the courteous Under-Secretary of State.
The merger between the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council is a natural one. On that I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). There are conflicting functions within the organisations, but both establishments are concerned with the good use, management and preservation of the countryside. The conflicts are best dealt with when taken together in a committee rather than being set apart, which often generates false conflicts.
My first contact with the Nature Conservancy Council was during my visits to the Isle of Rhum, which I have already mentioned. The council has always been a delight to me and others, and looks after that island very well; access to it is free and easy, and I have never had any problems. Its management of that island is an excellent example of just what the Nature Conservancy Council can do. Therefore, all in the House can trust in an organisation constituted, in part, by the Nature Conservancy Council to provide good management and ensure the preservation of the countryside in the mountain regions of Scotland. Therefore, I wish the new organisation well. It has the full-hearted support of Opposition Members.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I agree with the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) that the Bill enjoyed a good Committee stage, and that Magnus Magnusson will be a dedicated, conscientious and determined chairman of the new organisation and willl make a complete success of it.
I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) has participated as he started this theme with the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. As he said, the Bill provides great hope and possibilities.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has a particular interest in environmental matters. I have been unable to convince him on the justification of merging the two organisations, but I think it is fair to say that the House as a whole welcomes that proposal—most Scottish Members of Parliament do. I certainly agreed with what the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) said on that issue. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow well knows, we amended the Bill with regard to the built heritage.
I believe that we have created a stronger environmental agency in practice that will make more use of existing mechanisms. To the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) I say that the working party will be established before long. As a first step, we have commissioned review papers from the relevant interested parties on the issues facing the management of the region and what should be done.
To my hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) I say that the new organisation will have to operate with much more sensitivity in relation to future non-statutory appeals.
The protection and conservation of landscape and wildlife are closely linked and cannot be separated from access and enjoyment of the countryside. We believe that an integrated approach by one agency will provide a more effective means of stimulating the sustainable use of Scotland's natural heritage. The new agency will maintain and extend the work of both organisations, building on their existing strengths and staff expertise. We expect Scottish Natural Heritage to bring about changes in attitude towards conservation and the enjoyment of Scotland's natural heritage. With its network of offices throughout Scotland and its regional structure, it will be well placed to play a responsive and sensitive role.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow raised a number of issues, including recreation. I shall be happy to respond to him in detail later. I think that that is probably the best way to proceed because he raised a large number of issues relating to structure.
The agency will be a much stronger environmental organisation and will be greatly in Scotland's interests. I thank hon. Members for participating in our debates on the Bill.

Mr. Dalyell: I do not expect any answers tonight, but I would ask for a letter to reflect the careful consideration that will be given to the matter.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman will most certainly receive the answers, but I again stress that this will be a much stronger environmental agency for Scotland.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.

PETITION

Traffic Management Scheme (Great Harwood)

Mr. Ken Hargreaves>: I wish to present a petition to the House on behalf of the residents of Great Harwood. The petition expresses concern at the introduction of a traffic management scheme in the Park road and St. Hubert's road areas of Great Harwood, which residents feel is not only inconvenient but may result in an increase in the number of accidents. They feel that there is great danger to children and old people.
The residents feel aggrieved because they consider that they were not properly consulted and that their views were not taken into account by local councillors and Hyndburn borough council before thousands of pounds were wasted on a scheme that will increase the danger, spoil the environment and cause inconvenience to residents and loss of trade to businesses. They say:
We object to the traffic ramps in St. Hubert's road, Park road and the surrounding area. There is no parking space for residents and there is no indication whether pedestrians or motorists have right of way.
The petition continues:
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do urge the Secretary of State for Transport to review the traffic management scheme in St. Hubert's road and Park road and the surrounding area in Great Harwood, taking into account the views of local residents, and to bring forward improved proposals. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray, etc.

To lie upon the Table.

Orpington Hospital

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Neil Hamilton.]

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook>: Orpington hospital has its origins in a military hospital built with prefabricated buildings by the Canadian army for its troops during the first world war. Over the years, it has grown so that now it has, in addition to many of the original buildings, modern residential staff accommodation, a social centre and a substantial modern block, completed in 1982 at a cost of £9 milion and known as the Canada wing. It includes twin operating theatres and 264 of the hospital's 354 beds. The Canada wing is the most modern fabric of the entire Bromley health district, with all facilities for acute patient care. The entire hospital stands on a site of 38·8 acres, of which 12 are green fields. There is ample room for expansion. The whole site lies just off the A21, a main artery from London to Kent and the Channel ports, and only two miles from the M25.
The existing official plan for the hospital's future, as approved by the Government some years ago, is that it should be further developed into a modern district general hospital, providing all acute services and a full-time, 24-hour accident and emergency service, to serve the needs of the southern half of the London borough of Bromley and adjacent areas in Kent. The southern half is the growing half of the borough. The northern half is intended to be served by the expansion of Bromley hospital, a cottage-hospital style building presently standing on a site of only nine acres in urban Bromley.
The area served by the local health authority is coterminous with the London borough of Bromley. Besides Orpington and Bromley hospitals, it includes hospital buildings in Farnborough, Beckenham and Cane Hill. The object of the officially approved plan was to rationalise hospital services in the health authority area by concentrating acute services on the two main sites.
So far, so good. The Canada wing represented phase 2 of the development plan for Orpington hospital. My constituents and I were looking forward to the completion of the third phase, projected for next year, when it was anticipated that all the old hutted accommodation would be replaced and the rest of the services appropriate to a modern general hospital would be added. Successive Ministers in this House have assured me that Orpington hospital will retain its place in the plan.
However, we reckoned without the bureaucrats, administrative and medical, who have now screwed up that prospect and left us in a situation where the hospital is reduced to a shadow of what it could and should be: its status for the purpose of professional training removed, its provision for general surgery and intensive care withdrawn, its accident and emergency service, even on the scale of a minor injuries unit, abolished, its professional staff leaving and the morale of those remaining at its lowest.
The community health council has unanimously passed a vote of censure on the health authority. The general manager of the health authority, like his predecessor, has left to go further up the hierarchy, and the chairman has left office in somewhat mysterious circumstances. Both posts are now vacant. How the authority got into that mess is instructive. In 1987, the planners got it into their

heads that the site of the existing Bromley hospital—nine acres—was too small to allow it to expand into a district general hospital to serve the northern half of the borough of Bromley.
They therefore proposed a deal—fashionable in those Thatcherite days—whereby the private sector could help to pay for the cost of a mammoth new hospital for all the acute services in the borough to replace both Bromley and Orpington hospitals. The new building, housing 820 beds and with parking space for 1,000 cars, would cost £100 million, which the planners of both the health authority and the borough council expected to raise by selling to private developers the surplus land at the other hospitals, which would be reduced to providing back-up services.
The idea would mean the death of Orpington hospital as my constituents know it. The prospect of the loss of that marvellous hospital on their doorsteps and journeying six to eight miles into Bromley is anathema to us all. Unfortunately, those in the north of the borough who formerly relied on Bromley hospital found the idea attractive, and they provide a majority on the council and on the health authority. The medical professionals also liked the idea, for they thought that it would mean greater opportunities for higher professional standards. The site proposed, which is owned by the borough council, is 21 acres of open space in the centre of the borough, where the traffic is often congested.
The idea seemed unstoppable when I raised the matter in the House on 30 October 1989. The then Under-Secretary of State for Health—my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman)—agreed that his predecessors had given me assurances about the future of Orpington hospital. He was sceptical about the chances of £100 million being raised for the scheme, but he did not want to intervene then. However, there was a hitch. The site for that massive piece of concrete jungle was in the green belt. It appears to be incredible that that fact was overlooked by the planners, but it was.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment called in the planning application. His inspector reported, inter alia, in paragraph 55 of his report:
I have come to the conclusion that whereas there is an undoubted need for new hospital provision in Bromley, the circumstances are not so very special as to overcome the strong presumption against inappropriate development in the Green Belt. There are to my mind other possible forms of development elsewhere which could achieve most of the objectives being pursued by the Health Authority.
He also reported in paragraph 22:
My conclusion on the evidence available is that the best prospect of locating the proposed new hospital elsewhere would be to combine a small development at the existing Bromley hospital site with a large development at Orpington".
So planning consent for the super-hospital was rightly refused. Green fields are especially precious in urban areas such as central Bromley.
Unwisely, the person who wrote to Bromley council to convey the decision of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment stated that the refusal was because the site was in the green belt and that there would be no objection if the green belt excluded it. As a result, the health authority chose not to take the sensible advice of the inspector and get on with making Orpington the major hospital in the district. It chose instead to persuade Bromley council to agree to an alteration in the boundary


of the green belt so as to exclude the site. This rather disreputable manoeuvre is now under way. I hope that local conservationists will be up in arms about it.
The poor quality of management that was revealed by the error has been the cause of many of the health authority's decisions that have affected Orpington hospital. There is undoubtedly a reluctance on the part of the authority, which draws most of its members from the north of the borough, to give Orpington hospital a fair deal in respect of staff and other resources. I cannot count the number of times that I have frustrated efforts to change the official development plan to the detriment of Orpington by initiating Adjournment debates.
In the financial year just ended, Bromley health authority was well over its budget. Drastic cuts, masquerading as rationalisation plans, were made to save money. Where did the cuts largely fall? You have guessed it, Mr. Deputy Speaker—they fell largely on Orpington hospital. They leave it without any general surgery, intensive care units or a casualty service of any sort. 'There is not even a minor injuries unit. There are fewer wards and fewer beds. The Canada wing is in danger of becoming a white elephant. In these circumstances, a ghastly tragedy could occur at any time for want of on-site surgery, anaesthetists and inter-hospital transport. It should be remembered that the nearby M25 is the scene of many major accidents involving casualties on a large scale. We need surgery services at Orpington hospital.
It is ironic that the money that is sought to be saved by the cuts—£1·5 million in a budget of £82 million per annum—amounts to the same sum as that which is thrown away on surveyors and other expenses for the abortive super-hospital. As if to prove that it is indifferent to the waste of public funds, the regional health authority, South East Thames, whose general manager was general manager at Bromley when the bureaucratic scheme was launched, has recently given another £1·5 million to pay for continuing design fees and other expenses.
I have heard from one designer who is involved that the entire project is being scaled down because of escalating costs and falling land values. A 500-bed hospital is now being contemplated. Even if the hospital is built, the new Bromley hospital cannot be ready before the year 2000. What is to happen meanwhile? Orpington hospital has been truncated. The existing Bromley hospital is bursting at the seams. Queen Mary's hospital, which is just over the border in the area covered by Bexley health district, cannot cope.
Was there ever such a muddle? It is no wonder that, in January, the community health council passed unanimously a vote of no confidence in the health authority. It was alarmed at the authority's failure to consult and at the waste of management time and resources being spent on the new hospital before planning consent had been obtained. It said that the £1·5 million could have been better spent on existing services. The professional medical staff are extremely worried by what might happen in the present hiatus. They approved of the new hospital on the understanding that it would be under way before any rationalisation of existing services took place. We could be heading for the worst possible outcome—no new Bromley hospital because of insufficient funds and land, and no expansion of Orpington hospital, because the land available has been sold to private developers.
The people responsible for this muddle should have been sacked rather than promoted, and members of the

health authority who condoned the inefficiency and faulty judgment involved and failed to correct it should be censured. It is a pity that nowadays the members of a health authority are not drawn from the ranks of the elected councils in the districts concerned, where they could at least be called to account.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Health told me a day or two ago that she has appointed a new chairman for the Bromley health authority, a Mr. Alan Cumming. She seems to have plucked him out of the air. I was not informed or consulted about his appointment. However good he is, he will not have the authority, let alone the experience, to do what is required to stop this nonsense. The Minister herself should intervene and tell the authority that it should stick to the existing plan and in any event get on with building up Orpington as a district general hospital without further delay.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell): My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) has, for many years, been a doughty fighter for Orpington hospital. In preparing for the debate, I looked over the speeches that he made. Both my immediate predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman), and his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney), were called to account by my hon. Friend for the way in which the health service has been planning the hospital facilities for his constituents in Orpington, and quite properly so. On both those occasions, and again this evening, he expressed vigorously and clearly the views that I am sure are widely held in his constituency, and did so in a way that leaves us with no option—nor should we have an option —but to take them seriously.
Before I deal with the substance of what my hon. Friend has had to say about the circumstances in which the NHS finds itself in Orpington I shall set it in the context of the way in which the NHS has to be managed. You will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the NHS is a vast organisation that cannot be run on the basis that every significant decision within it is made by one of four Ministers sat in Richmond house. It is, I believe, the largest organisation in the world in terms of the number of people that is employs, with two exceptions—the Red Army and the Indian railway, both of which made the mistake of over-centralising to an extent that we are determined to avoid in the management of the NHS.
For that reason, we have set up and recently reinforced a management system within the health service that delegates responsibility to district health authorities and, within health authorities, to the management teams within the hospitals, in order to ensure that the people who are responsible for using taxpayers' money to provide a health care system in each locality feel that they are responsible for the way in which the cash is used in the particular unit in which they work. That commitment to delegation, and then to accountability, which is the other side of the same coin, is something that we in the Department hold as a key objective in the evolution of our health service policy.
My hon. Friend, in talking about the impact of that on Bromley district health authority, regretted the fact that the passing of councillors from the health authority meant that, as he saw it, there was no local accountability to the local authority. I do not apologise for that, because,


although we have a commitment to delegate, the NHS is ultimately accountable to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and, through him, to the House. That is why my hon. Friend is entirely right, despite that commitment to delegation within the management system of the health service, to call Ministers to account in the House for the way in which taxpayers' money is used within the health service and the solutions that are arrived at by that delegated system of management.
There is a nice balance to be struck within the management of the health service. Ministers stress the importance of delegating decisions so as to ensure that resources are used effectively in each locality. Despite the fact that we emphasise the importance of that delegation, we do not duck our accountability for the decisions that the bureaucracy ultimately reaches. It is right and proper that the issues that are of obvious and continuing concern to my hon. Friend's constituents should detain the House this evening and that he should bring them to our attention.
The way in which my hon. Friend presented his constituents' concerns highlights the fact that there are two issues affecting the provision of health care in his constituency. Those issues can perhaps be run together, but they are nevertheless separate. The first issue is whether it is right to centralise acute care on a single site, in this case, the Elmfield site to which my hon. Friend devoted a considerable part of his speech.
My hon. Friend suggested that there was an official plan that called for the continued provision of acute care on two sites within the health district. I think that he will accept—although he may disagree with it—that for some time, it has been the established preference of the health service management in Bromley and within South East Thames to centralise acute care in Bromley on a single site. To describe the policy of providing acute care on two sites as the official policy of the health service management is no longer accurate.
The reasons why health service managers in Bromley have sought, or wish, to centralise acute care on a single hospital site in my hon. Friend's constituency, or serving his constituency, are not dissimilar from those in other parts of the country. They are familiar arguments. Advances in modern medicine provide us with a great opportunity, which we must seize and use properly, to provide an improving quality of acute care while, at the same time, employing fewer acute beds. There is a long-term decline—not merely in this country, but throughout the developed world—in the demand for acute beds and acute hospital space in the provision of an advanced health service. That argument, coupled with the increased dependence of acute care on high technology, has resulted in a pressure to centralise acute care into high-tech centres of excellence, not only in my hon. Friend's constituency but elsewhere.
That is one side of the argument, but my hon. Friend was right to stress the other side, which is to ensure that as acute care is centralised into centres of excellence, it is not allowed to become too divorced from the communities that it is supposed to serve. He was also right to stress the importance of considerations of local access, clinical viability and the development of centres of excellence.
That nexus of substantive issues is important and cannot be ducked, for it should concern anyone who is interested in the development of an efficient, modern system of health care.
The second set of issues that my hon. Friend mentioned involve planning issues related to the green belt. Quite reasonably, he quoted from the report of the inspector, who appeared to support the proposition that if acute care is to be centralised in Bromley, it should be centralised on the site of the Orpington hospital in my hon. Friend's constituency. As a distinguished lawyer, my hon. Friend will know the danger of relying on judges' obiter dicta. The question that the inspector was asked was not, "Where should the hospital be?" but, "Should the hospital be built at Elmfield?" Although my hon. Friend is entitled to pray in aid the inspector, I think that my hon. Friend will agree that the passage that he quoted from the inspector's report was of the nature of an obiter dicta. I am not sure what the singular of obiter dicta is. It was an obiter dictum, presumably.
It is not a factor on which we should put too much weight. Our planning system does not allow inspectors to tell us where we should build things; it asks inspectors whether a particular proposal—in this case a proposal to build the hospital at Elmfield—should be allowed. It must be right that the local authority, as the planning authority, and the health authority that wishes to build the hospital should retain the power of initiative in deciding planning questions. The inspector can dispose, but he should not be able to propose.
As my hon. Friend said, the London borough of Bromley, will vote on a proposal to change the nature of the green belt in the borough on I May, so it would be wrong for me to pre-empt what the council may say about a proposed change in the arrangements. It would also be wrong to pre-empt anything that may happen as a result of the change in the limits of the green belt.
However, it is fair to say that a decision on a major investment, such as has been envisaged by the health authority at Elmfield, would ultimately come to Ministers. Although this evening we can have a discussion that may illuminate some of the issues, I would not wish—it would be quite wrong to do so—to pre-empt the decision that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would make if a revised Elmfield proposal, which it was realistic to expect could be built because the planning law had been changed, came to him. There are a number of conditions in that sentence, all of which would have to be satisfied before a Minister could be asked to approve that proposal.
My hon. Friend has raised a substantive set of issues around the question of whether there should be a single-site acute care provision in Bromley. There are many hurdles still to be gone over before Ministers could be asked to make a specific decision. My hon. Friend's debate has served to remind us of his continuing interest in the outcome of that decision and of the strength of his feelings and those of his constituents about the outcome of that decision, when it is made.
The second issue is the temporary closures announced by the health authority in January this year. It has always been part of the management model of the health service that we consult before we make substantial changes, but that the health authorities reserve the right to make changes without consultation when financial pressures require urgent action. That was precisely the position in which the health authority found itself in January.
However, if a health authority makes such a temporary, short-term decision under financial pressure, it remains under an obligation to consult before the decisions are made final. That is why the health authority has issued the consultation document on the proposals and why the consultation is currently going ahead on the proposals that were implemented by the health authority in January.
My hon. Friend will recognise that the health authority believes that, as a result of the changes, it is still offering the same basic level of service measured by activity or output measures, but on a different pattern around the district which, I can understand, is less popular with my hon. Friend's constituents than the pattern that previously prevailed. In considering whether the changes should be made permanent, it is legitimate to consider not only the fact that there is a £l million revenue saving for the health authority as a result, but the question of access for my hon. Friend's constituents to the health care that is provided.
As my hon. Friend will know, if the community health council chooses to sustain its opposition, which it has expressed clearly in its letter to my right hon. Friend the

Secretary of State on 24 January, and to put forward an alternative proposal for the management of health care in Bromley which can still deliver the underlying objective for each health service manager, which is to live within the budget, the temporary closures could come to Ministers for them to make a decision. Once again, it would be wrong for me this evening to pre-empt any decision that my right hon. Friend may make as the result of such an appeal by the community health council.
My hon. Friend has taken the opportunity this evening to draw the attention of the House to difficult issues in his constituency. Both the long-term question of the centralisation of care and the short-term question of the changes implemented in January could ultimately come to my right hon. Friend for decision. I assure my hon. Friend that his arguments to the House this evening would be taken seriously into account in any decision that my right hon. Friend made in those circumstances.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.